Phil D Hall delivers integrated artificial intelligence chat systems that challenge socio-cultural, ethical and anthropological rationale. His objective is to create human to AI interaction systems that help to navigate the journey to successful human-machine relationships. He is one part of the I am Echoborg show a theatrical show created afresh each time by an audience having a conversation with an artificial intelligence.

Rik Lander is a conversation designer for AI chatbots and on the research team at the University of the West of England exploring how different “behaviours” expressed by an artificially intelligent training bot alter its relationship with users and the effectiveness of the training. He is the co-deviser of I am Echoborg.
If you want to know what talking to a sentient AI would be like then visit www.echoborg.com

In this episode I asked Phil and Rik when and how did the algorithms in social media start to go wrong and promote polarisation and extreme content. Whether the market for attention that is driven by behavioural economics will move from social media to chatbots. What exactly is so bad about AI-driven surveillance capitalism and what it means to be in the echochamber online.
We talked about keeping the human in the loop when creating conversations with AI and the truth behind home smart speakers. It was an illuminating conversation, at times it was hard to hear as this is some of the darker side of AI. But overarchingly I found Phil and Rik to be upbeat on technology with insights into how we create more positive AI and more positive living.