People vs The Desk Toys. Meet The Characters.

Every day people and AIs are being compared, their character—personas—and abilities.

There’s a much longer running Wolfram tradition. Comparing people with animals, sock puppets or desk toys. Which animal has the expression of which person you know? Which desk toy best represents the person sitting opposite in a meeting? Or which crocheted animal—a hobby of my daughter’s, prompted by my colleague Lianne’s vast constructed collection?

On the last count, marmoset “Conrad” and ring-tailed lemur “Stephen” were constructed with the crocheted personas widely believed to hold more sensible meetings than their human representatives.

Conrad and Stephen meet

Next up, Arnold, my wooden caterpillar from Prague, bought in the early 1990s. I like his winning expression: something between concern, indifference and blankness, complemented by his temperature sensitive albinism colouring of antenna and nose—and divergent squint.

Then there’s my Hungary alligator family—literally from Budapest! And my very enthusiastic, team-playing but slightly befuddled dog from Bulgaria.

Not only still available, but front-page feature: to celebrate the ram’s 50th birthday.

In 1990 on the Mathematica 2.0 tour we found wooden rams in Helsinki (just looked and they’re still available) and determined to buy two: a massive one for US headquarters and a smaller one for the European office—duly shipped on their divergent tracks. Why? Because of the Wolf-ram name, jokes at school about being a wolf in sheep’s clothing and so forth…The supine blankness of the ram’s features make it hard to beat in group meetings. No complementary wolfs yet found though.

Finish ram (smaller version) alongside the stellated icosidodecahedron windowsill fence

Those are some of the static toys, but when visiting a Chicago museum I ended up with wind-up ones too (I think designed in South America but with a “créature mécanique” making them seem French).

Different movements capture agitation, excitement, jumpiness or steadfastness amongst those across from me—not to mention how they get wound up 🤔. One even generates sparks.

Now all I need is an AI sitting across from me too…so I can calibrate its persona…against my desk toys.

Corrected dog/wolf-leg

P.S. My daughter reliably informed me that the “befuddled dog” is in fact a wolf, hence its purchase for me, so there is a complement to the ram. Also in the picture above, he’s so befuddled that his hind legs are mounted back to front…now corrected.