Answers.Body: <p>You are referring to 'proactive AI' as opposed to 'reactive AI' like Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Bixby, Google Assistant, and others.  There hasn't been much progress in this area of AI.  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd1mEm2Fy08&amp;t=1s" rel="noreferrer">Google's recent demonstration of Duplex</a> addresses this to some extent.  Some chatbots are proactive. <a href="https://www.genesys.com/customer-experience/innovations/meet-kate-blended-ai" rel="noreferrer">Genesys</a> provides such capability.  Check out their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdOprvic_20" rel="noreferrer">video</a></p>
  
  <p>Azure's bot service has a page on <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/nodejs/bot-builder-nodejs-proactive-messages?view=azure-bot-service-3.0" rel="noreferrer">how to implement proactivity</a> and there is another video that walks through the whole process: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am1NPUceFvA" rel="noreferrer">Learn to build Proactive Bot in 30 Minutes</a>.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian O'Donnell
Answers.Body: <p>It's certainly possible to create AI systems that ask questions.  Various forms of expert systems and diagnostic support system applications already do that.  As to the question of whether or not they are <em>curious</em>, that's one I'll leave to the philosophers.  But it is absolutely possible to create an AI that attempts to reason out a solution to a problem, find that it is unable to generate an acceptable answer, and then prompts the user for more information.</p>
  
  <p>One context where this can be done is Abductive Inference systems for medical decision making. I'd refer you to <em>Abductive Inference Models for Diagnostic Problem Solving</em> by Reggia and Peng, or <em>Computer Assisted Medical Decision Making 1</em> by Reggia and Tuhrim for more on that specific point.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: mindcrime
Answers.Body: <p>One of the simplest examples that I can think of is "Akinator". At the heart it uses decision trees to narrow down the search. It is not a "questioning" model like QA models used in Alexa, but it does asks questions.</p>
  
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Body: <p>Typical AI these days are question-answering machines. For example, Siri, Alexa and Google Home. But it is always the human asking the questions and the AI answering. </p>
  
  <p>Are there any good examples of an AI that is curious and asks questions of its own accord?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-01-26T17:49:53.337Z
Comments.Text: [Here](https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/1953/2444) is a related question.
Comments.UserDisplayName: nbro
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Comments.Text: That's a good question. I'm not aware of anything at the moment and It's not immediately obvious how that can be achieved. There was that thing with facebook a while back where AI was able "communicate" using a generated "language". An AI asking questions assumes it has something it's trying to solve. And how could it communicate the question that properly represents the "missing information". A peek into Baye's Theorem gives us some direction on how to solve this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem
Comments.UserDisplayName: Zakk Diaz
Tags: <agi><chat-bots>
Title: An AI that asks questions?
UserDisplayName: zooby
ThreadText: # An AI that asks questions?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2018-07-05)
  
  Typical AI these days are question-answering machines. For example, Siri, Alexa and Google Home. But it is always the human asking the questions and the AI answering.
  
  Are there any good examples of an AI that is curious and asks questions of its own accord?
  
  **Tags:** agi, chat-bots
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_2**: That's a good question. I'm not aware of anything at the moment and It's not immediately obvious how that can be achieved. There was that thing with facebook a while back where AI was able "communicate" using a generated "language". An AI asking questions assumes it has something it's trying to solve. And how could it communicate the question that properly represents the "missing information". A peek into Baye's Theorem gives us some direction on how to solve this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem  
  > **username_1**: [Here](https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/1953/2444) is a related question.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2018-07-06. Score: 4
  
  You are referring to 'proactive AI' as opposed to 'reactive AI' like Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Bixby, Google Assistant, and others. There hasn't been much progress in this area of AI. [Google's recent demonstration of Duplex](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd1mEm2Fy08&t=1s) addresses this to some extent. Some chatbots are proactive. [Genesys](https://www.genesys.com/customer-experience/innovations/meet-kate-blended-ai) provides such capability. Check out their [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdOprvic_20)
  
  Azure's bot service has a page on [how to implement proactivity](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/nodejs/bot-builder-nodejs-proactive-messages?view=azure-bot-service-3.0) and there is another video that walks through the whole process: [Learn to build Proactive Bot in 30 Minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am1NPUceFvA).
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2018-07-08. Score: 1
  
  It's certainly possible to create AI systems that ask questions. Various forms of expert systems and diagnostic support system applications already do that. As to the question of whether or not they are *curious*, that's one I'll leave to the philosophers. But it is absolutely possible to create an AI that attempts to reason out a solution to a problem, find that it is unable to generate an acceptable answer, and then prompts the user for more information.
  
  One context where this can be done is Abductive Inference systems for medical decision making. I'd refer you to *Abductive Inference Models for Diagnostic Problem Solving* by Reggia and Peng, or *Computer Assisted Medical Decision Making 1* by Reggia and Tuhrim for more on that specific point.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_5 on 2018-07-06. Score: 1
  
  One of the simplest examples that I can think of is "Akinator". At the heart it uses decision trees to narrow down the search. It is not a "questioning" model like QA models used in Alexa, but it does asks questions.
  
  
  ---
  
  