Pioneers of AI: Why AI conversations are always one-sided

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**Rana el Kaliouby** (1:22)
I use a variety of AI tools in my everyday life and work. But I do use ChatGPT as my personal confidant.
I was reflecting on why do I trust this AI?

**Charles Duhigg** (1:37)
So when you turn to ChatGPT and you confide in it about something that's happened, why are you doing that?

**Rana el Kaliouby** (1:46)
I think I use it as a tool for self-unpacking and self-journal a lot. And it's just maybe a better kind of interrogation journaling.

**Charles Duhigg** (1:55)
That would have been my guess 100%. When you're talking to ChatBot about relationships, you're not turning to it because you think it's going to give you great advice. You're turning to it because it's a very efficient and a very interrogative way of you essentially keeping a diary.
Whereas if you call up your friend and you say, like, here's what's going on with my relationship, part of it is that you want their actual advice. Are you thinking about this the right way? Part of it is that you do just want to get it off your chest. You just need someone to hear what you're thinking. There's all these different things that a conversation can represent. It's very infrequent that AI offers all of those different things.

**Rana el Kaliouby** (2:38)
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a writer at The New Yorker. In his New York Times bestselling book, Supercommunicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, Charles explores the science and art of truly connecting with other people. So, what does it mean to be a super communicator? Especially in a world where so much of our connection is mediated through technology. Today, we're taking Charles' research and applying it to our AI-infused lives.
I'm Rana el Kaliouby and this is Pioneers of AI, a podcast taking you behind the scenes of the AI revolution.

**Charles Duhigg** (3:23)
Rana, did you live in Egypt? Did you grow up in Egypt?

**Rana el Kaliouby** (3:26)
I grew up in Cairo and also the Middle East. Did you spend any time in Egypt?

**Charles Duhigg** (3:30)
I did. I used to live in Babalu near AUC.

**Rana el Kaliouby** (3:33)
What? I went to AUC. You went to AUC? Yes. I'm an alum. I was on the board forever. My sisters went to AUC.
Did you?

**Charles Duhigg** (3:42)
I was there 97 to 98

**Rana el Kaliouby** (3:46)
No way.

**Charles Duhigg** (3:47)
Yeah.

**Rana el Kaliouby** (3:47)
So nice to have you on the show. Welcome to Pioneers of AI. Thanks for having me. I wanted to start with a personal story. I've been studying human communication and human connection for over 26 years.
My origin story is I grew up in Cairo and around the Middle East, and then I had an opportunity to go do my PhD at Cambridge University. It was my first experience living away from home. This is the year 2000, right? So it's a while ago.
And the only way I had to communicate with my family back home was through text and like sending emojis with like, I was homesick a lot of the time and I would send like a little emoji with like tears. And it just like struck me at some point that while all of the richness of like human communication kind of disappears when we're online, it disappears in cyberspace. And that got me down a rabbit hole of like literally engineering human communication. I got fascinated with facial expressions of emotion. So I wanted to hear your why. You wrote a book called Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Why did you write this book?

**Charles Duhigg** (4:54)