HCC: Medium: Social and Moral Relationships With Personified Robots

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This project will investigate people's social and moral relationships with personified robots. These robots, in various ways and to varying degrees, embody aspects of people insofar as they have a persona, are adaptive and autonomous, and can talk, learn, use natural cues, and self organize. This project will complete five complementary investigations: (1) Research on whether adults believe that a humanoid robot has feelings, is intelligent, can be a friend, is autonomous, and has moral standing (i.e., can be the recipient of unfair actions and unwarranted psychological harm). (2) A study of the extent to which children, adolescents, and adults believe that a robot can be responsible for harm it causes humans. (3) A study of moral standing and accountability that examines whether children, adolescents, and adults consider a humanoid robot most like a human, child, animal, or object - or as a new technological genre. (4) Research on whether children, adolescents, and adults believe that a robot is an entity that engenders trust and can be trusted. (5) A design study of patterns for sociality in human-robot interaction that characterizes essential features of social interaction between humans and robots. Taken together, this body of work would provide for the first time a systematic account of social and moral behavior and reasoning with a humanoid robot that cuts across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. In terms of basic science, this project will test the hypothesis that people do not simply act "as if " personified robots are social (like "characters" in a play), but engage personified robots sincerely and meaningfully as social others, and in some ways even as moral others. At the same time, this project would determine the extent to which human-robot interaction is not simply the mapping of human-human interactions (or human-animal interactions) onto robots, but represents a new genre: technological yet animate, personified, responsive, and seemingly autonomous. As personified robots become more prevalent and integrated into people's everyday social lives, they will pose children and adults with significant challenges, socially and morally. The specific challenges will depend on how the robots are designed, their context of use, and on how people actually interact with such robots. In future, robots may become caretaking assistants for the elderly, academic tutors for children, or medical assistants, day care assistants, or psychological counselors. Thus, it is important to understand at the outset how different age groups respond to robots and conceptualize their increasingly complex behavior. It is likely in the near future that the public will raise serious concerns about the introduction of personified robots into society. Concerns may be voiced, for example, that interacting with personified robots will reify a master-servant relationship (with the robot as servant), or undermine authenticity of real social relationships. Parents, in particular, may voice concerns about the impacts of personified robots on their children. The results of this proactive research and design project will provide guidance in responding most appropriately to such concerns and will establish principles for assuring that robots will be used only for human benefit.