Ikea’s Space 10 wants to democratise AI

Copenhagen – Designed and developed by Ikea’s external future living lab Space10, the Do You Speak Human? project is a worldwide survey launched to determine how people would like their future AI to communicate.

‘One day soon, we might talk to our devices the way we talk to our friends. And the devices will talk back,’ the site reads. ‘This fundamentally changes our relationship with technology and opens up for some very important questions.’

The lab refers to the project as ‘playful research’ and the survey results are updated live on the site. As of 28 April 2017 at about 3:00pm, 86% of participants would prefer their AI to be human-like rather than robotic, and 49% say it should be male. More than three quarters of participants say that AI should be able to detect and react to emotions, 70% say AI should reflect their own values and world view, and 42% say they want their AI to be religious.

Do You Speak Human? comes at a time when our interaction with AI is on the rise. According to Gartner, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse by 2020.