A truly human interface: interacting face-to-face with someone whose words are determined by a computer program

We use speech shadowing to create situations wherein people converse in person with a human whose words are determined by a conversational agent computer program. Speech shadowing involves a person (the shadower) repeating vocal stimuli originating from a separate communication source in real-time. Humans shadowing for conversational agent sources (e.g., chat bots) become hybrid agents (“echoborgs”) capable of face-to-face interlocution. We report three studies that investigated people’s experiences interacting with echoborgs and the extent to which echoborgs pass as autonomous humans. First, participants in a Turing Test spoke with a chat bot via either a text interface or an echoborg. Human shadowing did not improve the chat bot’s chance of passing but did increase interrogators’ ratings of how human-like the chat bot seemed. In our second study, participants had to decide whether their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot or simply pretended to be one. Compared to those who engaged a text interface, participants who engaged an echoborg were more likely to perceive their interlocutor as pretending to be a chat bot. In our third study, participants were naïve to the fact that their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot. Unlike those who engaged a text interface, the vast majority of participants who engaged an echoborg did not sense a robotic interaction. These findings have implications for android science, the Turing Test paradigm, and human–computer interaction. The human body, as the delivery mechanism of communication, fundamentally alters the social psychological dynamics of interactions with machine intelligence

Machine Performers: Agents in a Multiple Ontological State

In this thesis, the author explores and develops new attributes for machine performers and merges the trans-disciplinary fields of the performing arts and artificial intelligence. The main aim is to redefine the term “embodiment” for robots on the stage and to demonstrate that this term requires broadening in various fields of research. This redefining has required a multifaceted theoretical analysis of embodiment in the field of artificial intelligence (e.g. the uncanny valley), as well as the construction of new robots for the stage by the author. It is hoped that these practical experimental examples will generate more research by others in similar fields. Even though the historical lineage of robotics is engraved with theatrical strategies and dramaturgy, further application of constructive principles from the performing arts and evidence from psychology and neurology can shift the perception of robotic agents both on stage and in other cultural environments. In this light, the relation between representation, movement and behaviour of bodies has been further explored to establish links between constructed bodies (as in artificial intelligence) and perceived bodies (as performers on the theatrical stage). In the course of this research, several practical works have been designed and built, and subsequently presented to live audiences and research communities. Audience reactions have been analysed with surveys and discussions. Interviews have also been conducted with choreographers, curators and scientists about the value of machine performers. The main conclusions from this study are that fakery and mystification can be used as persuasive elements to enhance agency. Morphologies can also be applied that tightly couple brain and sensorimotor actions and lead to a stronger stage presence. In fact, if this lack of presence is left out of human replicants, it causes an “uncanny” lack of agency. Furthermore, the addition of stage presence leads to stronger identification from audiences, even for bodies dissimilar to their own. The author demonstrates that audience reactions are enhanced by building these effects into machine body structures: rather than identification through mimicry, this causes them to have more unambiguously biological associations. Alongside these traits, atmospheres such as those created by a cast of machine performers tend to cause even more intensely visceral responses. In this thesis, “embodiment” has emerged as a paradigm shift – as well as within this shift – and morphological computing has been explored as a method to deepen this visceral immersion. Therefore, this dissertation considers and builds machine performers as “true” performers for the stage, rather than mere objects with an aura. Their singular and customized embodiment can enable the development of non-anthropocentric performances that encompass the abstract and conceptual patterns in motion and generate – as from human performers – empathy, identification and experiential reactions in live audiences

Human-Robot Interaction: Mapping Literature Review and Network Analysis

Organizations increasingly adopt social robots as additions to real-life workforces, which requires knowledge of how humans react to and work with robots. The longstanding research on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) offers relevant insights, but the existing literature reviews are limited in their ability to guide theory development and practitioners in sustainably employing social robots because the reviews lack a systematic synthesis of HRI concepts, relationships, and ensuing effects. This study offers a mapping review of the past ten years of HRI research. With the analysis of 68 peer-reviewed journal articles, we identify shifting foci, for example, towards more application-specific empirical investigations, and the most prominent concepts and relationships investigated in connection with social robots, for example, robot appearance. The results offer Information Systems scholars and practitioners an initial knowledge base and nuanced insights into key predictors and outcome variables that can hinder and foster social robot adoption in the workplace

As evocações que assombram a interface do computador

Although computers are rationalist, they recall the occult in answering users’ invocations with evocations. Invocations call non-humans for signs during crises. Outputs are evocative signs with affective impact and meaning. While legacy media are evocative, transporting or broadcasting signs, invocational media creates networked cybernetic relations in a lively quasi-magical communication. This article evaluates the evocative intensity of two invocational works that recall the mystical heritages of technology: Silent Hill, a horror video game series, and Ai-Da, a robot artist.Embora os computadores sejam racionalistas, eles lembram o ocultismo ao responder às invocações dos usuários com evocações. As invocações chamam os não humanos para sinais durante as crises. Os outputs são signos evocativos com impacto afetivo e significado. Enquanto a mídia legada é evocativa, transportando ou transmitindo sinais, a mídia invocativa forma relações cibernéticas em rede em uma comunicação viva quase mágica. Este artigo examina a intensidade evocativa de duas obras invocativas que relembram as heranças místicas da tecnologia: a série de videogames de terror Silent Hill e o artista robô Ai-Da.Si bien las computadoras son racionalistas, recuerdan lo oculto al responder a las invocaciones de los usuarios con evocaciones. Las invocaciones llaman a los no humanos en busca de señales durante las crisis. Las salidas son signos evocativos con impacto afectivo y significado. Mientras que los medios heredados son signos evocadores, de transporte o de difusión, los medios de invocación forman relaciones cibernéticas en red en una comunicación viva casi mágica. Este artículo examina la intensidad evocadora de dos obras invocativas que recuerdan las herencias místicas de la tecnología: la serie de videojuegos de terror Silent Hill y el robot artista Ai-Da

New materialism and gender - (re) configuring human and robotic embodiment

Dissertation (MA (Digital Culture and Media))--University of Pretoria, 2022.Dominant understandings of sex, gender and sexuality align with patriarchal ideology that maintains misogyny, sexism and male supremacy. A critical feature of the aforementioned gender paradigm is strict mutually exclusive binarism and essentialism. By taking a queer feminist perspective on gender (and the gender binary) and using posthuman new materialism (agential realism) as a theoretical framework this study engages with the constitution of myriad binaries, including the male/female, man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual, sex/gender, human/nonhuman and mind/body binaries. Through a diffractive reading of feminist poststructuralist, new materialist, biological, ethnographical and queer theories of sexual difference, sex, gender and sexuality and the binary genderisation of anthropomorphised social technologies – including intelligent assistants and companion and humanoid robotics – the iterative constitution of sex, gender, sexuality, body and human is explored revealing various apparatuses that material-discursively (de)stabilise these binaries. Thinking of gender, the body and the human as dynamic contingent phenomena and taking a non-anthropocentric stance allows a reconsideration of both robotic and human embodiment. Paramount here is the dual possibilities of creating more of the same, reinscribing normative realities or leaving open the potential for the co- creation of dynamic futures.Visual ArtsMA (Digital Culture and Media)Unrestricte

Difference-in-relation: Diffracting human-robot encounters

This article adopts Donna Haraway’s (1992) and Karen Barad’s (2007) lenses of reflection and diffraction to probe into human-robot relationships in-the-making. Dominant practices of human-robot interaction aspire to an optics of reflection based on the belief that the differences inherent to machines need masking or assimilating. I propose that diffracting human-robot encounters requires becoming-with and co-worlding with artefacts and their asymmetries. Entering the robot lab to witness my collaborative Machine Movement Lab project and its diffractive strategies in-the-making, as well as the material-bodily knowledges they enact, offers situated insights into how they make tangible difference patterns and relational ontologies at work in our more-than-human encounters