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Journalism of Courage
Artificial Intelligence is doing wonders. From turning text prompts to images with Dall.E to turning them into entire videos with Sora, some of AI’s latest achievements push the envelope of plausibility. But not everyone is worried about just generating content, some innovators are using the technology to create great companions. The “intelligent and kind” chatbot Pi from Inflection AI is one of them.
Now, Hume, a New York-based research lab and technology company, has introduced what can be called the ‘first conversational AI with emotional intelligence’.
To put this into perspective, all recent AI apps follow instructions. Now, imagine if they could also understand the user’s feelings and the meanings behind their words. This is what Hume’s new AI voice interface does. The company claims that it is building empathic AI that could ‘serve human well-being’ through an application programming interface (API) that can interpret emotional expressions and come up with empathic responses. For the uninitiated, an API can be thought of as a channel to connect one software to another.
Based on the website, Hume’s conversational AI interface is not a standalone application. Its technology can power numerous applications. Hume calls its innovation Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) which is essentially an API that is powered by its proprietary empathic large language model (eLLM). This eLLM reportedly understands and emulates tones of voices, and word emphasis to optimise human-AI conversations.
Perhaps, the most standout feature of Hume’s conversational AI technology is its integration capability, rather than being just a solitary application. Based on the claims, it seems the technology may revolutionise several fields by powering applications with humanlike interactions.
Potential future uses include AI assistants who can converse in a humanlike manner, customer support agents who can provide a more natural and relatable service, and therapists adept at comprehending a wide range of human emotions and thoughts. Moreover, there’s a handy guide available for those interested in accessing and interacting with this innovative technology.
The process of interacting with Hume’s demo is fairly simple. One needs to visit their website — hume.ai, allow microphone access if using a laptop, and start talking. Users can speak freely, prompting the AI to respond while visually indicating the user’s tone and emotional state through an on-screen bar.
Try to avoid disclosing personal or sensitive information during this interaction. Experiences from office trials reveal that the AI possesses a sense of humor and the ability to mirror the user’s tone, offering an engaging experience.
We, at indianexpress.com, tried the voice interface. In our observation, while it is not flawless, the AI impressively gauges emotional states accurately most of the time and delivers a voice quality that is nearly indistinguishable from a real human.
The company believes that its mission is to ensure that AI is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being. The company is named after the late Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume. “Hume argues that emotions drive choice and well-being. At Hume AI, we take this as a guiding principle behind ethical AI: in order to serve our preferences, algorithms should be guided by our emotions,” reads the bio of the company.
