Is an AI avatar worth it on your panel, and which one?

01Characters

Which character your panel is missing

An AI avatar earns its seat on a panel when it says something nobody else up there would say. Which character that is depends on who has already agreed to come. For a panel we recommend Albert, Vera or Ken.

• No opposing voice

  Albert

  Your guests come from the same camp and agree by the end of the first round. Albert takes the counter-position your briefing gives him and addresses the guests by name.

• Numbers with no source

  Vera

  Guests on stage argue with forecasts and success figures, and nobody asks where they come from. Vera asks. She does not make up numbers of her own.

• Those affected are missing

  Ken

  The panel talks about customers or neighbors, but none of them has a seat on stage. Whose view Ken represents is set in your briefing.

02Limits

When it is not worth it

If your format lives on guests cutting each other off, it is too slow. After the last word of the question, it takes a median of about two seconds until you hear it, rarely less than about 1.5 s.

It plays the counter-position because the briefing tells it to. If you know a person who holds that view out of conviction, the seat on stage belongs to that person.

03On stage

It gets the floor from the moderator, like every guest

An example of where Albert fits into a panel. The moderator introduces him along with the guests, as an AI avatar and with the position from the briefing. After that he stays quiet until she calls on him. That pays off after the first round, once there are statements he can work with. He waits until she has finished, names one of the guests and picks up what that guest said earlier. The guest can hit back right away. That turns into a short exchange between two positions, and the moderator decides how long it lasts. When she calls on the next guest, he is quiet again.

Whoever he addresses is sitting on stage in front of the room. If a jab hits a guest harder than the moderator wants on her panel, she reads it on her tablet before the room hears it. She taps STOP and gives the guest the floor.

04Next step

Start with your guest list

Next to each name already confirmed, write one sentence on what that guest stands for in the discussion. If several of those sentences read almost the same, your panel is missing a point of view. The sentence nobody on the list would say tells you which one.

If one of the three characters fits that sentence, that is the position it argues on stage. Keep the list, because it becomes the briefing.