A Chat with Pi, the AI Chat Bot

With text to speech, AI is becoming more and more ... human.

👋 Hi, I’m Till and welcome to AI Anxiety, a weekly newsletter all about AI for theAI-avoidant. Let’s learn together.

These past few weeks, I’ve been diving head first into the apprehensive, anxiety-inducing, exciting, and promising world of AI. Yup, many conflicting emotions in this space.

I’ve read articles on how AI manages to “think”, watched interviews with Sam Altman and Mira Murati (The CEO and CTO of OpenAI, respectively) where they took optimistic yet decidedly cautious stances on the future of AI safety, and I’ve come to realize that there is much more to the world of AI than Chat GPT.

Open AI’s Chat GPT isn’t the only AI software out there accessible to the public – not by a long shot. Actually, it’s overwhelming just how many different apps there are to try in this space.

So, when you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything you’re “behind” on in AI, why not vent to a personalized AI chat bot?

Ya, there’s an AI tool for that. It’s called Pi – branded as an AI personal assistant, a friendly advice-giver, a chat bot with an open ear – and it’s scarily … human. So much so, that even my roommate, an acknowledged AI skeptic, was impressed.

For me, the thing about Pi that makes it so human isn’t the actual text it strings together, although that’s amazing in and of itself, but rather the fact that it can read it back to you in an eerily human voice. It pauses, breathes in between sentences, emphasizes key words for emotion, and even occasionally stutters while speaking, all to simulate human conversation.

Not convinced? Here’s me asking Pi for a little perspective on my newsletter …

It’s getting harder and harder to tell if who you’re talking to is biological or artificial.

We’re not in the age of Siri or Alexa’s robotic dial-tone voice anymore.

Sure, Pi gets it wrong here and there – with its inflection on certain words and especially when it strings together cheesy lines you’d never expect to come out of anyone’s mouth, except maybe a highly enthusiastic summer camp counselor.

Even still, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Week 2 AI resource: ‘The AI Breakdown’

Whether on YouTube, via his newsletter, or on Spotify, check out Nathaniel Whittemore’s The AI Breakdown for daily updates on what’s going on in the world of AI.

I’ve been listening to his podcast on my bike to work each morning.

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