Aristotle and the chatbot: how ancient rules of logic could make artificial intelligence more human

Many attempts to develop artificial intelligence are powered by powerful systems of mathematical logic. They tend to produce results that make logical sense to a computer program -- but the result is not very human. In our work building therapy chatbots, we have found using a different kind of logic -- one first formalised by the Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago -- can produce results that are more fallible, but also much more like real people. The underpinning science of our chatbots is formal logic. Modern formal logic has its basis in mathematics -- but that wasn't always the case.