Can AI really help people chill the duck out? Experts say…

Kira Leigh

Feb 13, 2019·8 min read

If you spend any amount of time talking to entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small biz owners, you’ll realize that stress is a daily part of their lives, pretty quickly.

According to the Gallup Wellbeing Index, 45% of entrepreneurs report being stressed compared to 42% of “other workers.” Entrepreneurs also report being more likely to have “worried a lot” — 34% vs. 30%.

— The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: 2018 Data & Resources for Help by Aaron Orendorff

Colloquial conversations with my fellow brethren eventually devolve into how much work they have on their plate, fears about the future, and both of us trying to send each other good vibes.

Suffice to say, it’s a strange, rough, tricky, risky path we take. Stress and anxiety are par for the course.

I should know. I’m currently in the head-space of restarting my business, training freelancers, and going on a lead-gen kamikaze crusade after ditching my efforts almost completely.

I went a little…too hard with all that.

Too hard. Too fast. Too soon. I’ve apparently learned nothing from my repeated push-backs against hustle culture.

More aptly put, slamming into Social Media, content marketing, and distribution to network my ass off is a bad habit I fall into way…way…way too easily.

I started to look for a solution, and since I’m fascinated by AI, I decided to give it a go.

Enter Open Dialogue: A Chatbot that helps you get your shit together.

Transparently: I’m not working with Open Dialogue. I’d love to help write for Chatbots or do blog articles for AI businesses, but it hasn’t been in the cards (breaking into Gaming has been easier for me and the team, oddly enough).

This was done mostly for curiosity’s sake, but more specifically because I’m going 120 MPH in a school-zone with my biz, which is the exact opposite tactic I should be taking.

Let’s see if Motoko Lite can help a stressed brother out.

After signing up, I was brought to a minimalist page with a basic slider. I appreciate how minimal it is, because it removes distractions.

Stress can create a distracted mind, so that was definitely helpful.

The copy on the page was pretty spot-on, and the humanizing language already made me feel confident that this team knew what the duck was up.

They defined stress, defined what Open Dialogue aims to do, defined how to use it, and defined how they hope it can help the user overcome their obstacles.

That struck me as pretty next-level.

I was, and am, personally impressed with their copywriting.

As someone who is currently very disillusioned with the majority of the tech industry, marketing, and all that good gravy, this already felt like a refresher.

It felt like at least the team understood AI and machine learning as a way to tackle real-world issues, and not just make fancy marketing robots because something, something customers, something something, money-things.

This gives me hope for the tech industry in a way I can’t quite explain, except to say that it should be used for the growth of mankind, and not just the growth of profits.

Which is a point I’ll get to in a moment, that I’m pretty sure Open Dialogue helped me come to terms with, at least a little bit.

So far so good, Open Dialogue. Whatcha got? Hit me with your best shot.

I started up the Chatbot and it began by asking me what brought me to Open Dialogue. I wanted to be honest, and to really see if the Bot could learn what I was all about.

More than that, I wanted to look for what I call “Specific Feedback”, which is a component of active listening.

For those who don’t know, I studied education (how I got into tech is honestly beyond me, the ride has been wild), and it’s a component of teaching and understanding information.

What I call “Specific Feedback” is less for venters, and more for people who want actual solutions, and want to be prompted to think deeply and work their way through their problems, versus just ranting about them.

I’m one such person, and I’d bet a lot of Entrepreneur types are as well. We like solutions. So it makes sense that we’d want to find someone who can give us actionable and pointed responses, right?

Yelling into a void really…doesn’t help.

Let’s keep responding and see how Open Dialogue does at sussing out what’s going on.

Ok, so we’re hitting a mild roadblock here. The Chatbot just keeps asking me the same types of questions over and over again.

See above and below for some more screenshots.

We’re getting to the “Machine Learning” part of this equation, and it’s pretty obvious.

Open Dialogue made it a point on one of their slides to outline that the process and AI worked best with patient users who realize the machine has to, well, learn.

Ok, yes, good, great, yes, but there’s only so many times I can say the same thing.

I realize at this moment that I’m not the best person to judge this Chatbot, now, because I am possibly the least patient human in the entire world, ever.

I tried asking the Chatbot a question, hoping it’d steer me in a different direction.

It finally started asking me some questions again, which was good, because I was getting tired of explaining myself, repeatedly.

Fear, uncertainty and discomfort can be your compasses towards growth. Do you see any benefits associated with the more difficult emotions you are experiencing?

I’m not really sure how to answer that, Open Dialogue. Which means it was a smart question, because I have to now think about it.

My answer was: I think it forces me to think up new and creative ways to get things done.

I wasn’t sure if this exchange was going to help me at all, but I decided to put my faith into Motoko Lite and soldier on for the next hour.

(I’m aware Motoko isn’t an AI, I’m just fond of bringing up Ghost in the Shell at every given opportunity.)

I think a good solid hour is enough of a chunk of time to feed responses to a machine to see if it does what it says it does.

I’m going to save you the effort of having to read more personal play-by-plays, but I did come up with some solid observations about AI, machine learning, empathy, and my own journey.

Here’s the final verdict on Open Dialogue, de-stressing with AI, and what I think the future holds for this type of product.

I think solutions like Open Dialogue are good for people who are stressed out, don’t have the time to sit with a therapist or don’t really need one, and just need someone to help them refocus their thoughts.

I spotted common CBT techniques, which are cognitive behavioral therapy techniques used in Psychology, but I’ve done that dance and it doesn’t solve my current dilemma.

Focusing on your breathing, taking a moment to inhale, exhale, the whole nine yards. So they have a psychologist on staff or at least are familiar with CBT, which is helpful but not quite what I’m looking for.

And it won’t really help people with the deeper, sticky, juicy “what’s the meaning of life” and “how do I help the world” questions.

Which I apparently devolved into after yapping at this bloody AI for an entire hour.

This brings me back to an earlier point:

Even if Open Dialogue wasn’t asking me the hard questions or challenging me enough, it still did something really positive. In spite of itself, or because of itself, the jury is still out on that one.

It did frustrate me enough to think on why I’m so up my own butt about Meaning, Integrity, working only with Certain Clients, and why I’m such an obnoxious grandstanding assbutt.

I still don’t have a solid answer, but suffice to say expecting an AI Chatbot to be able to answer philosophical questions is way, way, way outside of its depth.

At least it got me thinking more.

AI has a bright future as a tool for good. We’re not quite there yet, but I’m hopeful.

I think right now, that this technology in many ways is fairly rudimentary. Of course it is, the machines aren’t that smart yet.

However, AI does have practical, wholesome, holistic, “for the good of mankind” applications, which I want to see more of.

Zipline, for example, sends life-saving medicine and health supplies all over the world via drones.

There’s an AI For Good Global Summit, which, if I had any human capacity to cart my butt to Geneva, I’d definitely attend.

Google has its own AI For Social Good landing page at this point.

Say all you want about Google, but they’re trying to navigate the AI and machine learning industries in a way that is helpful.

Like using machine learning to help identify if you’re going to have a heart attack. That’s pretty wild.

More of using AI for world-good, less using AI to try to replace employees, please.

In summation, Chatbots like Open Dialogue may not be your solution, but it may be a solution for people needing someone to talk through their stresses with.

The point remains that AI can really be used for good, I personally believe in that. I’m excited about the future where machine learning and AI are concerned.

If we make a concerted effort to use this technology for good, I think we can truly change the world.

But it’s honestly up to us to make sure that’s what we do with it, instead of turning the world into Blade Runner 2049.

Only time will tell if we wield a fully-actualized AI for good or not.

Here’s to hoping that we do.

Kira Leigh is a snarky marketing nerd, writer, and artist. See her work here and send her a message if you want to work together with her amazeballs team.

Special thanks to Renato P. dos Santos for his continued support.