Re: [projectvrm] A long deep walk down uncanny valley

[Matt Hogan < >]

For those keeping score, X.ai is another company in this space. They are also a PDNYC alum

https://x.ai/

Dennis & co raised $9.2mm earlier this year, from Matt Turck's team at firstmark. 

http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/x-ai-raises-9-2m-at-a-40m-valuation-for-its-ai-based-email-assistant-who-sets-up-meetings/

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 2:50 PM, Dan Miller < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Brian:

You've uncovered a nice, benign corner of the world of "intelligent assistance" where calendaring and contact information is the basic knowledge base in play and natural language front-ends give it a human-like feel.

Clara is "off-the-shelf" and schedules meeting and manages calendar events. Prices range from $200 – $600 per month, with the first month free.

There are competitors like EasilyDo, Tempo.ai and a few others.

I don't know if there is a direct evolutionary line to negotiating deals, but it is clear that these things are learning from experience and that they feel no compunction to reveal that they are 'bots.

The "uncanny valley" question, of course, is whether you or your friend found it "creepy" upon learning that we're interacting with a humanlike user interface to a calendaring system, rather than a person.

-Dan

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 11:31 AM, Brian Behlendorf < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

https://claralabs.com/

So a colleague here had been interacting with a certain company's CEO to set up a couple of meetings over the course of the month, only being told later that "Clara", the exec's PA, was actually a bot.  He was surprised, another person here scheduling some meetings was surprised.  Even the deferring responses to requests for more information didn't flag it, or how she responded when asked "Can we hop on the phone to find a time" with "I'm sorry, things are crazy here, I think it's best if we stick to email"... didn't flag it as outside the usual.

Next up, a bot for negotiating VC deal terms.  "You've got funding."

Brian

--

Matt Hogan

CEO/Co-Founder
DataCoup, Inc.

Datacoup.com

@matthewphogan

@datacoup

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