An Exploratory Study to Determine the Effects Conversational Repetition Has on Perceived Workload and User Experience Quality in an Online Human-Robot Interaction

Human-robot interaction studies in the Caribbean currently face two challenges. First, the robots used in these studies have difficulty understanding many of the regional accents spoken study participants. Secondly, the global pandemic has made in-person HRI studies in the Caribbean more challenging due to the physical and social distancing mandates. This paper reports on our exploratory study to determine what kind of impact these two challenges have on HRI by evaluating the effect conversational repetition has on a human-robot conversation done using video conferencing software. Using network analysis, the results obtained suggest that conversational repetition has several subtle relationships on perceived workload. One interesting finding is that frustration and effort are indirectly affected by conversational repetition. Results from the short User Experience Questionnaire indicate that the overall quality of the user experience is perceived as positive-neutral. This encouraging result indicates that video conferencing may be a suitable interaction modality for HRI studies in the Caribbean

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 6

his is the complete volume of HMC Volume 6

Understanding and avoiding AI failures: A practical guide

As AI technologies increase in capability and ubiquity, AI accidents are becoming more common. Based on normal accident theory, high reliability theory, and open systems theory, we create a framework for understanding the risks associated with AI applications. This framework is designed to direct attention to pertinent system properties without requiring unwieldy amounts of accuracy. In addition, we also use AI safety principles to quantify the unique risks of increased intelligence and human-like qualities in AI. Together, these two fields give a more complete picture of the risks of contemporary AI. By focusing on system properties near accidents instead of seeking a root cause of accidents, we identify where attention should be paid to safety for current generation AI systems

Understanding and Avoiding AI Failures: A Practical Guide.

As AI technologies increase in capability and ubiquity, AI accidents are becoming more common. Based on normal accident theory, high reliability theory, and open systems theory, we create a framework for understanding the risks associated with AI applications. In addition, we also use AI safety principles to quantify the unique risks of increased intelligence and human-like qualities in AI. Together, these two fields give a more complete picture of the risks of contemporary AI. By focusing on system properties near accidents instead of seeking a root cause of accidents, we identify where attention should be paid to safety for current generation AI systems

Artificial intelligence empowered conversational agents: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Consumer research on conversational agents (CAs) has been growing. To illustrate and map out research in this field, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of published work indexed in the Clarivate Web of Science and Elsevier Scopus databases. Four dominant topical areas were identified through bibliographic coupling. They are 1) consumers’ trust in CAs; 2) Natural Language Processing (NLP) in developing and designing CAs; 3) communication with CAs; 4) impact of CAs on value creation and the value of CAs for business. We leverage these findings to provide an updated synopsis of extant scientific work. Moreover, we draw a framework whereby we identify the: 1) drivers of and motivators for adoption and engagement with CAs; and 2) the outcomes of CA adoption for both users and organizations. Finally, we leverage the framework to develop an agenda for future research

Territorial Violence and Design, 1950-2010: A Human-Computer Study of Personal Space and Chatbot Interaction

Personal space is a human’s imaginary system of precaution and an important concept for exploring territoriality, but between humans and technology because machinic agencies transfer, relocate, enact and reenact territorially. Literatures of territoriality, violence and affect are uniquely brought together, with chatbots as the research object to argue that their ongoing development as artificial agents, and the ambiguity of violence they can engender, have broader ramifications for a socio-technical research programme. These literatures help to understand the interrelation of virtual and actual spatiality relevant to research involving chatrooms and internet forums, automated systems and processes, as well as human and machine agencies; because all of these spaces, methods and agencies involve the personal sphere. The thesis is an ethical tale of cruel techno-science that is performed through conceptualisations from the creative arts, constituting a PhD by practice. This thesis chronicles four chatbots, taking into account interventions made in fine art, design, fiction and film that are omitted from a history of agent technology. The thesis re-interprets Edward Hall’s work on proxemics, personal space and territoriality, using techniques of the bricoleur and rudiments (an undeveloped and speculative method of practice), to understand chatbot techniques such as the pick-up, their entrapment logics, their repetitions of hateful speech, their nonsense talk (including how they disorientate spatial metaphors), as well as how developers switch on and off their learning functionality. Semi-structured interviews and online forum postings with chatbot developers were used to expand and reflect on the rudimentary method. To urge that this project is timely is itself a statement of anxiety. Chatbots can manipulate, exceed, and exhaust a human understanding of both space and time. Violence between humans and machines in online and offline spaces is explored as an interweaving of agency and spatiality. A series of rudiments were used to probe empirical experiments such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Tucker, 1950). The spatial metaphors of confinement as a parable of entrapment, are revealed within that logic and that of chatbots. The ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiments (Milgram, 1961) were used to reflect on the roles played by machines which are then reflected into a discussion of chatbots and the experiments done in and around them. The agency of the experimenter was revealed in the machine as evidenced with chatbots which has ethical ramifications. The argument of personal space is widened to include the ways machinic territoriality and its violence impacts on our ways of living together both in the private spheres of our computers and homes, as well as in state-regulated conditions (Directive-3, 2003). The misanthropic aspects of chatbot design are reflected through the methodology of designing out of fear. I argue that personal spaces create misanthropic design imperatives, methods and ways of living. Furthermore, the technological agencies of personal spaces have a confining impact on the transient spaces of the non-places in a wider discussion of the lift, chatroom and car. The violent origins of the chatbot are linked to various imaginings of impending disaster through visualisations, supported by case studies in fiction to look at the resonance of how anxiety transformed into terror when considering the affects of violence