American Company Uses Artificial Intelligence to Study Human Interaction

A New York-based startup company has integrated artificial intelligence (AI) into a text messaging app that can predict a user’s personality and by extension, the personalities of the people he/she is messaging.

As we are all no doubt aware of how a single misinterpreted text message can land a person in trouble, ‘Mei: Messaging with AI’ CEO Es Lee looks to solve that problem with the help of his AI-integrated app, which sheds light on the underlying intent behind messages.

The company launched the beta version of the app just a few months ago, and in a short span of time has managed to attract more than 130,000 users. Targeting almost everybody, Lee believes his app is aimed at anybody who maintains a relationship through text messages.

“We didn’t target a particular demographic this time around because we knew everybody could use help. In fact, it is the people who you think wouldn’t be the target demographic that need it the most,” said Lee in an exclusive interview with Business Recorder.

Using natural language processing and advanced algorithms, Mei is based on the Big Five personality factor model used for psychological testing that includes: Openness, Emotional Control, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness – all of which are further broken down into sub-categories. Mei also pinpoints the top traits of a person and traits that the user and their friend share in common.

“We picked the system as there’s a lot of scientific research on it. The Big Five is hands-on been used for decades with a lot of published research, surveys, and labeled data from psychology. It has always been like stress-tested for 30 years, so we thought why would we even try to challenge it, try something different?”

Despite the fact that humans can detect personality traits too, Lee asserts that we still don’t have the dataset that Mei’s algorithms have whereby they can analyze millions of relationships and figure out unknown aspects of a person’s personality via very minor cues in conversation.

Where privacy is of grave concern to most people these days, Lee acknowledges people’s insecurities and admits that it would be possible for a user of the app to consider it an invasion of their privacy. “Privacy is always on top of our mind. We realize that there is nothing more private than your collection of personal texts to people. We realize what they are thinking in their mind like ‘hey I am already afraid of Alexa listening to everything I say at home, here’s another company that could potentially abuse that’. We respect that a lot and we have done a lot of things to make sure that people will feel comfortable sharing this data with us.”

Lee explains that before turning on the AI and gaining access to the personal messages, the app informs users that their messages will be collected in order to understand them and build up a profile. But the decision lies entirely with the user.