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IntroductionIn Japan, the social climate surrounding older adults has gotten worse as a result of the spread of COVID-19 and the growing isolation of older adults who are increasingly unable to engage in prosocial behavior through work and volunteering. This is detrimental to the physical and mental well-being of older adults. The purpose of this study is to look into robot teleoperation for older adults as a viable way to deal with these issues and overcome the barriers preventing older adults from engaging in prosocial behavior.Materials and methodsWe designed and tested a remote-control approach for dialogue agents that is appropriate for older adults as well as evaluating their impressions in a real-world setting. Twelve older adults participated in experiments in two separate locations, a children's center and the city ward office, where they could remotely teleoperate a robot and have conversations with the visitors. In the city ward office, the older adults had a conversation with the visitors and gave them information and trivia quizzes about the city. In the children's center, older adults had conversations with children regarding their age, family, their likes, and dislikes. A questionnaire and interview were set up after the experiments to understand their impressions of the system and to clarify how older adults feel about certain issues regarding remote-controlled work, starting a new job, social interaction, to what extent have older adults been affected by the pandemic, how and in what ways has it affected their involvement in society, and whether teleoperating a robot can be a suitable approach to encourage prosocial behavior from them through volunteer work and social engagement.ResultsThe results show that older adults have a strong desire to engage in volunteer work, but are hampered mainly by physical isolation resulting from COVID-19 restrictions and their declining physical and mental health. Their impressions of the teleoperation system were highly positive, as they enjoyed having conversations with children through the robot. With this teleoperation system, older adults were able to remote control a robot by themselves without major issues. It made interaction simpler as conversing with children through a robot added a layer of anonymity that allowed older adults to express themselves freely without worrying about how they are perceived by others in public.DiscussionOlder adults were able to successfully engage in prosocial behavior through remote-controlling a robot. The system seems to be effective at easing the physical barriers preventing older adults from engaging in volunteer work, which have worsened since the spread of COVID-19.

IntroductionDespite the abundance of evidence on climate change and its consequences on future generations, people, in general, are still reluctant to change their actions and behaviors toward the environment that would particularly benefit posterity. In this study, we took a preliminary step in a new research direction to explore humans' altruistic behavior toward future generations of people and whether it can be affected by dialogue.MethodsWe used an android robot called Telenoid as a representative of future generations by explaining that the robot is controlled by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) living in a simulation of our world in the future. To measure people's altruistic behavior toward it, we asked the participants to play a round of the Dictator Game with the Telenoid before having an interactive conversation with the Telenoid and then playing another round.ResultsOn average, participants gave more money to the Telenoid in the second round (after having an interactive conversation). The average amount of money increased from 20% in the first to about 30% in the second round.DiscussionThe results indicate that the conversation with the robot might have been responsible for the change in altruistic behavior toward the Telenoid. Contrary to our expectations, the personality of the participants did not appear to have an influence on their change of behavior, but other factors might have contributed. We finally discuss the influence of other possible factors such as empathy and the appearance of the robot. However, the preliminary nature of this study should deter us from making any definitive conclusions, but the results are promising for establishing the ground for future experiments.