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It has been known to Gerontologist s for some time that Pet s, particularly those such as Cat s and Dog s, which exhibit a range of Behavior s and " Emotion s", help prevent depression in the elderly, and studies also show some beneficial results from electronic pets such as Sony 's Aibo and Omron 's NeCoRo. However, the therapeutic value of such artificial pets remains limited by the capabilities of Technology . Television viewing among the elderly represents a significant percentage of how their waking hours are spent, and the percentage increases directly with age. Seniors typically watch TV to avoid loneliness, yet TV limits social interaction, thus creating a vicious circle. It is Masthoff's contention that it is possible to develop an interactive, personalized form of television which would allow the viewer to engage in natural Conversation and learn from its conversations. Such applications have been with us for decades. The earliest, such as the "psychologist" program '' ELIZA '', did little more than identify key words and feed them back to the user. At the beginning of the 21st century, languages such as AIML allow developers to create artificial interfaces whose conversations are, if well-crafted, almost indistinguishable from human conversation. At this time, these conversations are very narrow in scope, but are sufficiently sophisticated that these Chatterbot s (aka. chatbots) are gaining acceptance by business as front-end telephone receptionists or online website assistants. While much work remains to be done to develop an interface which can converse in a meaningful and interesting manner, the authoring tools are in place for such an endeavor. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |
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