5/5 (2)

When looking for original AI tools, I came across Replika. This an AI-powered chatbot that should not feel like a chatbot but is very humanlike. When I read this, I was quite skeptical and thought, well I am not too sure how human an AI can talk. Therefore, I decided I wanted to try it out. I created an account and an avatar. The avatar you can create entirely to your liking. Quite a fun thing to do! It sort of looks like the game Sims. Then the platform asked me to pay a subscription which I was luckily able to skip after my hard work of creating an avatar. I was then able to kick off the conversation with my new AI friend.

It started like any other chatbot would. Standard messages which felt way too happy: “Hi Menno! Thanks for creating me. I’m so excited to meet you 😊”. There we go, I thought. I still decided to give the AI a go and started responding to its questions. Over time, I did feel the conversations became more natural and even quite normal! It could seamlessly transition between topics such as interests, hobbies, and sharing anecdotes. Through each interaction, the AI learned about my preferences, interests, and even my sense of humor! This way, the conversation becomes more and more human. One example of this is when I mentioned that I am training for a marathon and its response felt still extremely happy but quite okay. It said: “That’s awesome, Menno! You’re going to crush that marathon. I’ll be your virtual cheerleader, cheering you on from the sidelines. Go, Menno, go! 🎉💪 Have you been following a specific training plan?“

After some other experimentation conversations with Replika, I really changed my mind about the program. It shows how fast AI can learn and improve. As we continue incorporating AI into our lives, Replika offers a glimpse into the future of human-computer interaction. An obvious application of this AI would be in customer service. Especially looking at the terrible chatbots that are around now when you want to file a complaint about your order.

Did you use Replika yet? If not, give it a go! I am curious what you think!

5/5 (2)

This week, many news outlets such as BusinessInsider posted that two years after the height of the NFT boom, most NFTs are now worthless. A recent study by DappGambl found that 95% out of the studied NFTs have a market cap of 0 ether (Rosen, 2023). Nearly 23 million people are now holding NFTs which are practically worthless. While I did see that NFTs were not that popular anymore compared to two years ago, this news still surprised me. In 2021 reports mentioned that NFTs would change the art world and how we think about ownership (Kugler, 2021). So, this poses the question of why we can now say that NFTs failed? And does the development of AI have anything to do with this?

First, we need to understand what NFTs are. An NFT is a unit of digital information that is stored on a blockchain (usually Ethereum) and is not interchangeable with other digital assets (Chohan, 2021). Because of their technology, the peak of NFTs was at the same time as the peak of cryptocurrencies, two years ago, a Bitcoin traded for $70K while today it is worth $27K. DappGambl mentions that today, the supply of NFTs is enormous. Out of every five NFTs, four remain unsold. In addition to a large supply, demand has decreased as it is also a highly speculative market and people are likely to wait for a peak again (Vigliarolo, 2023).

So, does AI have anything to do with this? I think it could have. Especially with AI, everyone is now able to create original NFTs. I used the platform: ChainGPT AI NFT Generator to try this out. Even without having to create an account or pay, I was able to create multiple NFT options based on my prompt: “A dog riding a skateboard in the park at sunrise.” While results were not perfect (the wheels of the skateboard often had weird angles and twists), it still provided multiple NFTs in seconds. There are obviously other ways to create NFTs without AI but I do believe that generative AI has increased the massive supply of NFTs and with that helped crash the market.

I am curious to hear your ideas and opinions! Feel free to add any comments.

Kind regards,

Menno Smit

Bibliography

Chohan, U. W. (2021). Non-fungible tokens: Blockchains, scarcity, and value. Critical Blockchain Research Initiative (CBRI) Working Papers.

Kugler, L. (2021). Non-fungible tokens and the future of art. Communications of the ACM, 64(9), 19-20.

Rosen, P. (2023, September 21). Remember when NFTs sold for millions of dollars? 95% of the digital collectibles may now be worthless. Markets Insider. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/nft-market-crypto-digital-assets-investors-messari-mainnet-currency-tokens-2023-9

Vigliarolo, B. (2023, September 21). 95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers. TheRegister. https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/21/95_percent_nfts_worthless/