Chatbots with Social Skills Will Convince You to Buy Something

The descendants of Alexa and Siri might come with a surprisingly good sales pitch. I met an early version of such a persuasive chatbot at a tech conference in Pittsburgh recently. After some small talk and jokes, the bot, called Sara, recommended some other people for me to meet. The suggestions were in fact excellent, and if I hadn't just met with them already, I would've followed her lead. Sara was developed by Justine Cassell, director of human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, who is studying ways for virtual agents to use subtle cues in conversation to build rapport with people and become more effective at conveying information or persuading them to do something.