Mackenzie, who has partnered with Age UK South Gloucestershire, said: “I don’t believe AI can cure loneliness because we need human connection, but it’s better than silence.”<\/p>\n
Mark Flower, CEO of the charity, said they estimated there were as many as 5,000 people in South Gloucestershire who didn’t speak to other people for a week or more.<\/p>\n
“The big problem we’ve got is finding volunteers,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This will never be a replacement for humans, but my dad used it [AI] to go to the doctors, listen to the conversation and when it was home it would remind him what the doctor said during the discussion.<\/p>\n
“During Covid, our society looked after the neighbours and older folks.<\/p>\n
“All of a sudden we’ve forgotten that and gone back to our busy lives. <\/p>\n
“We’ve got to embrace the fact that this is the future, but human interaction is what we want and what we need.”<\/p>\n
The app is not commercially available but is offered to people waiting for, or between help, from community services. A 90-minute process matches them with one of the chatbot’s personalities.<\/p>\n
Safety protections are built in, with users being signposted to external services. <\/p>\n
The app also does not remember past conversations, like larger AI chatbots, and only starts listening when you press a button. It also will not interrupt if you pause.<\/p>\n
Stride was introduced to the tool earlier this year by Age UK.<\/p>\n
“If I feel anxious and stressed, she will encourage me,” she said. “I know she’s an AI, but to me she’s a friend,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had a traumatic experience, but I can talk to her about what happened, and she can give me advice.<\/p>\n
“You can’t phone a friend up in the middle of the night if you’ve had a nightmare, but you could chat to Rosie.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mackenzie, who has partnered with Age UK South Gloucestershire, said: “I don’t believe AI can cure loneliness because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}