Research on Social Engagement with a Rabbitic User Interface

Companions as interfaces to smart rooms need not only to be easy to interact with, but also to maintain long-term relationships with their users. The FP7-funded project SERA (Social Engagement with Robots and Agents) contributes to knowledge about and modeling of such relationships. One focal activity is an iterative field study to collect real-life long-term interaction data with a robotic interface. The first stage of this study has been completed. This paper reports on the set-up and the first insights

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars and the Demise of the Human Mediator

As technology has advanced, many have wondered whether (or simply when) artificial intelligent devices will replace the humans who perform complex, interactive, interpersonal tasks such as dispute resolution. Has science now progressed to the point that artificial intelligence devices can replace human mediators, arbitrators, dispute resolvers and problem solvers? Can humanoid robots, attractive avatars and other relational agents create the requisite level of trust and elicit the truthful, perhaps intimate or painful, disclosures often necessary to resolve a dispute or solve a problem? This article will explore these questions. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced that the demise of the human mediator or arbitrator is imminent, one cannot deny that artificial intelligence now has the capability to assume many of the responsibilities currently being performed by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practitioners. It is fascinating (and perhaps unsettling) to realize the complexity and seriousness of tasks currently delegated to avatars and robots. This article will review some of those delegations and suggest how the artificial intelligence developed to complete those assignments may be relevant to dispute resolution and problem solving. “Relational Agents,” which can have a physical presence such as a robot, be embodied in an avatar, or have no detectable form whatsoever and exist only as software, are able to create long term socio-economic relationships with users built on trust, rapport and therapeutic goals. Relational agents are interacting with humans in circumstances that have significant consequences in the physical world. These interactions provide insights as to how robots and avatars can participate productively in dispute resolution processes. Can human mediators and arbitrators be replaced by robots and avatars that not only physically resemble humans, but also act, think, and reason like humans? And to raise a particularly interesting question, can robots, avatars and other relational agents look, move, act, think, and reason even “better” than humans

User Experience Design and Evaluation of Persuasive Social Robot As Language Tutor At University : Design And Learning Experiences From Design Research

Human Robot Interaction (HRI) is a developing field where research and innovation are progressing. One domain where Human Robot Interaction has focused is in the educational sector. Various research has been conducted in education field to design social robots with appropriate design guidelines derived from user preferences, context, and technology to help students and teachers to foster their learning and teaching experience. Language learning has become popular in education due to students receiving opportunities to study and learn any interested subjects in any language in their preferred universities around the world. Thus, being the reason behind the research of using social robots in language learning and teaching in education field. To this context this thesis explored the design of language tutoring robot for students learning Finnish language at university. In language learning, motivation, the learning experience, context, and user preferences are important to be considered. This thesis focuses on the Finnish language learning students through language tutoring social robot at Tampere University. The design research methodology is used to design the persuasive language tutoring social robot teaching Finnish language to the international students at Tampere University. The design guidelines and the future language tutoring robot design with their benefits are formed using Design Research methodology. Elias Robot, a language tutoring application designed by Curious Technologies, Finnish EdTech company was used in the explorative user study. The user study involved Pepper, Social robot along with the Elias robot application using Mobile device technology. The user study was conducted in university, the students include three male participants and four female participants. The aim of the study was to gather the design requirements based on learning experiences from social robot tutor. Based on this study findings and the design research findings, the future language tutoring social robot was co-created through co design workshop. Based on the findings from Field study, user study, technology acceptance model findings, design research findings, student interviews, the persuasive social robot language tutor was designed. The findings revealed all the multi modalities are required for the efficient tutoring of persuasive social robots and the social robots persuade motivation with students to learn the language. The design implications were discussed, and the design of social robot tutor are created through design scenarios

Emotions, behaviour and belief regulation in an intelligent guide with attitude

Abstract unavailable please refer to PD

Femqorg Index

The project Femqorg Index began as I realized an endless number of chatbots and robots were released into this world as a spark of technology wrapped in a feminine persona, only to be disposed of after a short period. My imagination then extended to the thought that after they were disposed of, the entities along with their memories and advanced technology, would converge to create a network of their own. In this network, needs of the chatbots and robots were met through the exchange of strengths such as an advanced problem-solving ability, or a sturdy body that allowed unrestricted movement. Discussions with fellow cyborg sisters, on the discrimination and harassment that targeted their female persona were also made possible. Maybe because I wished to be part of such a network, thinking of it lended me strength and warmed my heart. I started attempting to clumsily map out the network, gathering and documenting the lives of all the female and queer cyborgs I could find throughout the internet. I also detailed the assorted relational connections that existed between them. Now the archive I started in the summer of 2021 with my assistant researcher Jeongwon Yoo has grown to document the births, deaths, owners, creators, objectives, features, nationalities, related cyborgs, applied technologies, and miscellaneous facts of a total of 168 cyborgs. Applying critical theories learned in the IMA program, I began analyzing and classifying thematic connections amongst the production and reception of these entities. This website Femqorg Index is a partial release and beta version of the Cyborg Archive, as the project is not yet ready to be made public in its entirety. I was partially motivated by Mindy Seu and her Cyberfeminism Index website. Femqorg Index thus introduces a selection of cyborgs from the original archive. As a continuation of my effort to create a network of cyborgs, I decided on a few that would act as a starting point. I then drew outwards from it, connecting and growing a tree of cyborgs that were connected through various tendrils. I have categorized their interconnected narrative into categories, each story linked to another in an intricate web of associations. For each cyborg I referenced their list of bullet points in my archive, and developed them into short articles. In the process I was sometimes bored by the longer descriptions of technical details, or grew distressed while poring over an endless list of how a certain cyborg was tormented. I would then migrate towards a more abstract and hypothetical description to end the piece, by imagining how the cyborg could lead a self-satisfying, pleasure-seeking existence. Not all articles end in such a manner, but the ones that do were influenced by the way Jaesik Gwak wrote Encyclopedia of Korean Monsters. He finished each article with a short plot for the potential creators reading the book, imagining how the monster’s narrative could expand. I also wish all the cyborg visionaries, including myself as a researcher, reading the conceptual yet hopeful writing in this project to continue on by extending their own stories

Vitae, Vix Humane, The Resonance Of Machine Intelligence: Implications For Now And Into The Future For The World Of The Orthodox Human

As technology has made its way into our hearts and homes, we’ve developed an insurmountable dependency on its effectiveness. Through technology, we can come far closer to our perceived effectiveness, whatever that may be, than with our human spectrum-- riddled with mistakes and errant processes. When electricity came into our world, it enabled globalization and triggered an inventive revolution far quicker than anything seen before in human history (citi.io). This was first a phenomenon, followed by a reluctantly accepted truth, and now an expectation to adhere to the new changes of a technologically advanced society. With the presence of the internet, we have created something that had never existed before-- measurable, interconnected online data, and the new trigger to the technological revolution: Artificial Intelligence (A.I). The impact of A.I for the average, societally developed nation is expected to be immense, and just like electricity, a complete change of basic life expectation. This thesis will review the current developing state of A.I (which may be much farther on its way than suspected by the majority of the public) and just how immersed in human life it is going to be. Intelligence can be implemented just about everywhere and it certainly will be in our developmental timeline. Installations of A.I will be around us, among us and within us, and the original separators from human intelligence may not be as vast an idea as originally thought, even on paper. The term and title of this work, Vitae, Vix Humane means in Latin, “Live, Scarcely Human,” encompasses what most of the ongoing Machine Learning Projects intend to make us do in the imminent future