Mom Who Travels For Work Builds AI Clone of Herself to Keep Her Teenage Son Company
TL;DR
Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah Baldeo travels constantly for work, so she built a chatbot version of herself to stay present for her 15-year-old son. She trained it on screenshots of their text conversations plus documents describing her values and the family rules. Her son promptly used the clone to work out how to talk her into a trip, an outcome she described as being outargued by her own reasoning.
Nauti's Take
The case is a useful demo of how far personalized chatbots have come, since a handful of chat screenshots and a values document produce a convincing voice, which is a real advantage for parents who travel constantly. The catch showed up immediately, because the son used the clone to work out how to talk his real mother around.
Anyone building one should decide up front which decisions the bot is never allowed to make.
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