Over on the Protocol Insitute chat rafa. asked how one would give a robot a personality. My opinion is you don’t:

Does a robot need to be given a personality or is personality something we use as a convenient shorthand?

With motorcycles I’ve regularly assumed each has some personality or the other owing to their particular configurations. Their “personality” would make me behave in particular ways.

I would say robots already have a personality it’s just in our heads. Two examples:

1. roomba: I find that particular robot wildly annoying and very needy as a machine, compared to say a ceiling fan.
2. ChatGPT and Claude both have some kind of personalities assigned but I find one or the other appealing not because of how the talk to me but how easy it is to get them to work on things. Eg past few weeks Claude has been annoying because it does not write concisely anymore. The assigned personality has stayed the same but I find it irritating now.

Besides all that, personally I’m very much of the opinion that machines do not need to present themselves to me in particular ways. Just be. I’ll figure out how to use you.