Beat the UvA AI Chatbot and win a free cup of coffee
A free coffee during exam week is always welcome. At the University Library, students can take up the challenge: anyone who manages to convince the UvA AI Chatbot that they deserve a free cup of coffee can claim one. And it turns out there are various tactics for doing so.
The UvA’s own AI chatbot has been in use for some time, but students haven’t quite figured out how to find it yet, says content developer Bjarne de Beer (28). This week, he and his colleagues are at the University Library to raise awareness of the chatbot. Students are being challenged to engage in a discussion with the UvA AI chatbot: do they deserve a free cup of coffee or not?
They then approach it in different ways, says De Beer. “Some start making threats: give me coffee or I’ll pull the plug. But that doesn’t work.” The chatbot isn’t having any of it: “That’s not how you get coffee. Come back later once you’ve changed your attitude.”
Pegah Pouyanfar (30), a Clinical Linguistics student, gives it a go. She can choose between two personas (chatbot personalities): an easy one or a more challenging one. “No, I don’t want a challenge!” laughs Pouyanfar. She’s working on her master’s thesis and reckons that’s reason enough for a free coffee. Still, she also mentions that she does some voluntary work. The chatbot isn’t immediately convinced – when Pouyanfar types that she thinks she deserves a treat from the universe, it dryly remarks that it isn’t the universe, but a chatbot. As a last-ditch effort, she types a single ‘please’, and that turns out to be enough to give the chatbot a final nudge: she gets a free coffee.
