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What do our interactions with machines reveal?

Xavier Basset - 2020 - TEDx Mines Ales
Xavier on stage at TEDx

TL;DR:

As a designer and developer, I have often thought about the ways in which our interactions with machines reveal insights about ourselves as humans.

These interactions can help us understand ourselves better and push us towards more intuitive and natural uses of technology. I have personally experienced the emotional power of such interactions, as demonstrated by the close connection my child formed with a robot during the holiday season. Additionally, I have come to appreciate the concept of attention in machine-human interactions and the importance of building relationships through attention and response. Empathy is also crucial in designing technology that meets the needs and emotions of the user.

I believe that technology has the potential to facilitate communication and connection between people, even across language barriers.

This is the best opportunity to make people communicate, learn, play and build love and happiness together at scale.

The question that I ask myself is what do our interactions with machines reveal? These interactions that we have with the machines that surround us, that we have everywhere, what do they reveal about us humans? What do they reveal about the methods that allow us to conceive them and what do they reveal about us when we use them?

No suspense, what do they reveal? They help us, they contribute to better understand us humans. And that's fantastic; in contact with these machines, we are somehow pushed into a dynamic where we need to better understand ourselves to conceive machines that are always more instinctive, always more natural to use and at the same time we are pushed towards uses that are being transformed.

Sparking Moment

So, I am an engineer, I am a developer, I code, I have been creating these interfaces for many years. I am an entrepreneur, I have created an activity, and I am a dad. As a dad, I have experienced an exciting experience with my son, and I would like to share it with you, an experience during which we are close to the end of the year parties and then I created a small program for my son that I installed in a robot, and then this robot is connected to a garland which is in a tree. I ask my son to come and sit down in front of this robot.

Nao waiting for Santa, Merry XMas!
A magical moment in family

"He did magic," said my son, very exciting for the dad.

So, there I can tell you that I took a dose of emotion living that experience, and I asked myself a lot of questions. In particular, what this interaction reveals, what it reveals for my son and what it reveals for me, the designer of this solution.

When I watch this video again, I can't help but think of another anecdote.

There might be a better way

A few years earlier, developer, we code and then we make software on another form of interaction with machines, screens and then we create buttons, etc. And so I was doing this for something super exciting, accounting software. And then I see myself again at the end of the day after a very rich day, a lot of reflection, to catch a piece of plastic in my right hand which had the effect of moving a small arrow on a screen to get to the bottom left area on which it was marked “start”.

Click Start to stop, really?
Click Start to stop, really?

And then I said to myself, but this machine has not understood anything, this is the last thing I want to do now, to start. What I want to do is stop and leave. My son, he had a completely different emotional experience, completely connected with this machine. We made some progress between this screen which does not understand anything about my state and this machine which made my son live in a completely overwhelming state.

So that opens us up to a world of opportunities. Finally, today, alternatively, we live in a world where the technology closer to us, easier to use, more instinctive, creates a field of possibilities that is just unimaginable.

What I would like to share with you is three little secrets that we discovered about what these interactions reveal with machines. We will look at them with the eye of the designer first and the eye of the user.

Engagement

The first is the concept of attention. What has changed in the machines that we produce today? Well, it is precisely this notion of attention. How does it work? What are we talking about? Between humans, when we interact, we look for a look. The look creates a first connection. I give you a little bit of my attention and you will give it back to me. And if I value it, if I want to do something with this attention, I will start building a relationship. I will start, why not, responding with a smile or, outright, engaging in a discussion. These are mechanisms that we use as humans, all the time, without even realizing it. Imagine that we managed to put that in machines.

The designer that I am thinks and acts with very simple mechanics. We place a look on a screen. You saw it with a robot that gesticulates in real life. Magic works right away. The attention is immediate, instinctive, natural. One of the challenges that we managed to raise recently is to make sure that this attention, we manage to do it from a simple screen.

Attention is all you need
Attention is all you need (sic)

So these two eyes, be careful, it's not a lure. We don't just have an image of the eyes. We also have, thanks to technological progress, especially around artificial intelligence, the ability now to truly perceive the reactions of the user to this machine. And so the loop of attention, that's it, we manage to get it in real life. Not bad. Here is a first step. We know that we are able to interact with a machine, to engage in a relationship in the same way as we can do with humans. Not bad.

Emotion

What do we need? It is said that in a message, in a communication between humans, 20%, less than 20% of the complete message goes through the sense of the words, less than 20%. And the rest then? One of the important components is emotion. The second pillar that we discovered. What is emotion? It is the ability to enrich a message, to enrich information and to convey a lot of things.

So, to make you realize very concretely how machines have evolved and are now able to express emotions, I am going to offer you an experience that you will see is just as shocking. I present to you a form.

Emotional experience
Emotional experience

It must remind you of something. This form, we gave it two little particular things. We put two controllers, okay? And then we will try to move them turn by turn. And what I'm going to ask you is to participate with me and try to imitate, at the same time as me, the emotion that you see on this form there.

neutral

We start by moving the first lever.

happy

We feel something.

sad

Well, there it becomes a little less pleasant.

We try to move the second lever.

energetic

A level of activity, we feel it, higher.

depressed

Then there we become a little calmer.

frustrated

Then this time if we stay in this state and we move the second lever.

excited

This is what the dynamics of emotion and the machines that we can create today are for. They have this ability to use these forms in a dynamic and adaptive way to convey, in addition to the meaning of the words, an emotion in an instinctive and natural way, exactly as you have just experienced it now. Engagement, emotion, fantastic.

Learning

A third lever that we have developed, that we have identified as one of the key points to advance, is the learning dynamics. Very easy to understand. When you interact with a child, you realize that he still has things to build and that he does it step by step by experimenting with the world with his own capacities for interaction, attention, and emotion. attention is the cry, it is the cry. Emotion is the reward, the hug where I throw my toys on the ground. Well, by experimenting, step by step, interaction after interaction, the child builds strategies to be the most effective and convey a message in the simplest and most effective way possible.

Well, for the machines, good news, now it is also possible. It is also possible because the techniques around artificial intelligence allow us to develop and to put very concretely in products learning strategies that evolve over time. Two steps back.

Engagement, emotion, learning... Terminator? No way.

Let's be optimistic.

What's ahead?

We have an opportunity today to create technological solutions in a benevolent way, at the service of the human, centered on the human, for which we must and we will build a new chain of trust.

People-centered interactions with digital services

Yes, because you have to think about it for a moment. These interactive, natural, instinctive machines with which we share our daily life, it is tomorrow our smartphone, it is tomorrow the connected assistants that we are going to have at home. These machines will increasingly have access to extremely intimate information about our daily life. We are talking about our emotions, we are talking about engagement levels. Well, we have an opportunity today, in a benevolent and enthusiastic way, to create a new value chain. A value chain where the product is not us. The product is not the free data that we are going to give away because we interact with these machines. Now we know it, you know it, we know it and we conceive it. These machines must be produced and used being aware that we are giving them a part of our humanity, that we are giving them a part of our existence.

And so, what is all this for? These interactive, engaging, emotional, learning machines for which we have a relationship of trust. Well, I project myself with you in uses that are absolutely fantastic for our children on three subjects.

Communicate, learn, play.

Communicate naturally

With these machines, always closer to us, easy to use, instinctive, communicate with my grandmother, whom I forgot to introduce to you, finally becomes possible. She never knew and understood what the Internet was for. The smartphone, for her, is really a test. An interactive and engaging device that catches her attention and is even able to show her a photo of her grandchildren without her even knowing what an application is. Communicate, this is a first real challenge on which we open the field of possibilities.

Learn better

Learn, well there, the idea is that we can very simply imagine learning processes that will be very personalized since, as these interactions, as the engagement that we will give to a machine, we will immediately feel the effectiveness of a strategy or another and the learning methods will really allow personalizing and adapting learning skills.

Play funnier

And then more fun, lighter, the game, of course, we will really have fun with new ways of interacting and thinking about new games with game assistants, game animators, game masters who will be able to replace these good old platforms that we put on a table and be on our side, as a family, and help us to animate games very connected, all together.

Communicate, learn, play. Finally, this is what makes us humans, this is what makes us grow as humans.

Interacting why?

And I would like to conclude on this vision, finally, where interacting with more and more connected machines, close to us, who know us in our own privacy and in a zone of confidence that we are building at the moment, well, we have in front of us, in a mirror, a way to understand the mechanisms that animate us. And in a way, by looking at them, by taking a little step back, and by observing them as such, we have in front of us a way to discover our own internal mechanisms and somewhere to develop our own personal evolution. Would these machines not be, in a very objective way, a way to make us realize that we have the possibility to improve our own daily life by taking action, by making our habits evolve, because they themselves will make us perceive them?

And in a way, they will eventually disappear and better connect us, and better serve us to connect between us. I interact with these machines, but I mostly interact with humans.

I interact, so I am.