Social Robots as Intentional Agents

Thellman, Sam

doi:10.3384/diss.diva-178806

“…Finally, the "social artifact puzzle" is puzzling: Even if someone can articulate that they have interacted with a robot as if it were a social agent while also knowing that it is a mechanical artifact, they might not be able to reconcile those two facts in a verbal description. Even human-robot interaction (HRI) theorists who think about this puzzle professionally find it difficult, and continue to disagree about whether the correct framework is depiction or image perception (Remmers, 2020), stance taking (Thellman, 2021), a dual process theory , or something else. The reflections of laypeople on this theoretical puzzle might therefore be fragmentary, self-contradictory, or vague.…”

Section: Doi:101017/s0140525x22001480 E44mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social robots as depictions of social agents

Clark¹,

Fischer²

2022

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Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agents per se, but as depictions of social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a class consist of three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows, people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. So, with social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents—the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models.

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“…Finally, the "social artifact puzzle" is puzzling: Even if someone can articulate that they have interacted with a robot as if it were a social agent while also knowing that it is a mechanical artifact, they might not be able to reconcile those two facts in a verbal description. Even human-robot interaction (HRI) theorists who think about this puzzle professionally find it difficult, and continue to disagree about whether the correct framework is depiction or image perception (Remmers, 2020), stance taking (Thellman, 2021), a dual process theory , or something else. The reflections of laypeople on this theoretical puzzle might therefore be fragmentary, self-contradictory, or vague.…”

Section: Doi:101017/s0140525x22001480 E44mentioning

confidence: 99%

Interacting with characters redux

Gerrig¹

2023

Behav Brain Sci

0

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“…as "intentional agents", whose "beliefs and desires" should be appropriately understood in order to interact with them (Thellman & Ziemke, 2020;Thellman, 2021). Conversely, robots should "understand others' actions, intentions, and emotions and show emotions themselves" (Brinck & Balkenius, 2020, 54), so that there could be "joint intention" (Breazal et al 2004), even "mutual recognition" between humans and robots (Brinck & Balkenius, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Sophia? On human interaction with artificial agents

Fuchs

¹

2022

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Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) create an increasing similarity between the performance of AI systems or AI-based robots and human communication. They raise the questions: whether it is possible to communicate with, understand, and even empathically perceive artificial agents; whether we should ascribe actual subjectivity and thus quasi-personal status to them beyond a certain level of simulation; what will be the impact of an increasing dissolution of the distinction between simulated and real encounters. (1) To answer these questions, the paper argues that the precondition for actually understanding others consists in the implicit assumption of the subjectivity of our counterpart, which makes shared feelings and a „we-intentionality” possible. This assumption is ultimately based on the presupposition of a shared form of life, conceived here as „conviviality.”(2) The possibility that future artificial agents could meet these preconditions is refuted on the basis of embodied and enactive cognition, which links subjectivity and consciousness to the aliveness of an organism.(3) Even if subjectivity is in principle impossible for artificial agents, the distinction between simulated and real subjectivity might nevertheless become increasingly blurred. Here, possible consequences are discussed, especially using the example of virtual psychotherapy. Finally, the paper makes case for a mindful appproach to the language we use to talk about artificial systems and pleads for preventing a systematic pretense of subjectivity.

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Social Robots as Intentional Agents

Cited by 12 publications

References 93 publications

Social robots as depictions of social agents

Social robots as depictions of social agents

Interacting with characters redux

Understanding Sophia? On human interaction with artificial agents

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