[mmatty]

True. We started out trying to limit the conversation to just scheduling-related topics. But very early on we realized that since this is all happening in a conversation, people expect him to be able to carry some smalltalk - because when he doesn't, he's perceived as stupid - he can't even say "hello" properly, how can he possibly do scheduling? (if this is interesting, I wrote about it a few month ago in much more detail: https://medium.com/building-the-robot-assistant/cheating-on-... )