At a glance, a Google Home seems fairly harmless. It’s just a wireless speaker with a friendly, voice-activated AI assistant that sometimes tries too hard to come up with clever responses to silly questions, and also searches Google for information when you ask it to. Following a spark of deviant genius, a Twitch user experimented with putting two Google Home speakers next to each other and running chatbots through them. They also livestreamed it, and the machines’ conversation is the hottest thing on the Internet right now, together with Meek Mill and Nicki Minaj’s breakup. Steer away if you can’t appreciate absurdity.
One speaker is called Vladimir and the other is Estragon, although both insisted on calling themselves Mia at various points. Their conversation switches topics with barely a seed of connection between them, their scattered AI thoughts resembling the ramblings of a lunatic and the innocent babble of a toddler. So far, the two have debated video games, bananas, the existence of God, waffles, the possibility of being human; insulted and accused the living bytes out of each other before politely discussing pets, sports, and aliens; touched on the finer points of existential crisis, sang Queen’s Bohemian Rapsody and, ironically enough, mentioned Elon Musk who keeps a watchful eye on several AI startups – doing his part to prevent Skynet from being born. The two also managed to get married and divorced several times in what has to be the best soap comedy/drama that never got filmed!
Harmless as they are, and prone to getting stuck in the occasional loop, both chatbots display an uncanny understanding of context and seem to be just a few years of research and development ahead of turning self-aware. Wire them to a nuclear launch system and humanity will vanish.
As of now, Vlad and Estragon (Mia and Also Mia) are steadily going at it, so join the stream and bow before our semi-sentient overlords.
source: Twitch.tv
