Frad

You could easily do another couple of miles tubby.

The voice came from Dr Baz’s phone almost as soon was we climbed off our bikes by one of the trail picnic tables.

“What was that? Was it Frad?” I asked the obvious question.

“Yes it was and it’s one of our problems,“ Dr Baz replied as he unwrapped a bar of chocolate. We can’t get the tone of Frad’s responses right. We’re looking to develop a rounded personality but can’t find the ideal mean between dull know-it-all and acerbic.”

“And at the moment it’s tuned to acerbic?”

“That’s right, I have to say that Frad is pretty good at telling it as it is when tuned towards acerbic, but obviously we can’t go public with it however good the results. There would be uproar.”

“You mean it could be worse that calling you tubby?”

He is tubby.

“Shut up Frad. We’ve had a few other problems with it,” Dr Baz went on to explain. For example an overweight staff member asked Frad about diet and losing weight. It suggest she should buy three pizzas, stack one on top of the other and scoff the lot as a pizza sandwich. Then it said –

You know you want to, so be true to yourself.

“Oh – I bet that didn’t go down well.”

“It did not go well at all, we had to make modifications. The trouble is, we seem to have a fundamental problem with conversational AI. There is not much conversational space between dull know-it-all on the one hand and acerbic but interesting on the other. ”

“It’s a real headache,” added Dr Baz as we climbed back onto our bikes.

I assume we are not going back already. said his phone.