Effects of Victim Gendering and Humanness on People’s Responses to the Physical Abuse of Humanlike Agents

With the deployment of robots in public realms, researchers are seeing more cases of abusive disinhibition towards robots. Because robots embody gendered identities, poor navigation of antisocial dynamics may reinforce or exacerbate gender-based marginalization. Consequently, it is essential for robots to recognize and effectively head off abuse. Given extensions of gendered biases to robotic agents, as well as associations between an agent\u27s human likeness and the experiential capacity attributed to it, we quasi-manipulated the victim\u27s humanness (human vs. robot) and gendering (via the inclusion of stereotypically masculine vs. feminine cues in their presentation) across four video-recorded reproductions of the interaction. Analysis from 422 participants, each of whom watched one of the four videos, indicates that intensity of emotional distress felt by an observer is associated with their gender identification and support for social stratification, along with the victim\u27s gendering—further underscoring the criticality of robots\u27 social intelligence

The perception of emotion in artificial agents

Given recent technological developments in robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, it is perhaps unsurprising that the arrival of emotionally expressive and reactive artificial agents is imminent. However, if such agents are to become integrated into our social milieu, it is imperative to establish an understanding of whether and how humans perceive emotion in artificial agents. In this review, we incorporate recent findings from social robotics, virtual reality, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how people recognize and respond to emotions displayed by artificial agents. First, we review how people perceive emotions expressed by an artificial agent, such as facial and bodily expressions and vocal tone. Second, we evaluate the similarities and differences in the consequences of perceived emotions in artificial compared to human agents. Besides accurately recognizing the emotional state of an artificial agent, it is critical to understand how humans respond to those emotions. Does interacting with an angry robot induce the same responses in people as interacting with an angry person? Similarly, does watching a robot rejoice when it wins a game elicit similar feelings of elation in the human observer? Here we provide an overview of the current state of emotion expression and perception in social robotics, as well as a clear articulation of the challenges and guiding principles to be addressed as we move ever closer to truly emotional artificial agents

Lasting Effects: How Poverty as a Child Still Affects the Adolescent

Based on her review of research concerning the millions of children and teens who live in poverty-stricken families in the United States, the writer seeks to identify the long-term effects of poverty in the adolescent years. In order to do this, many of the factors contributing to poverty are discussed. The parents\u27 education, the overall decline in marriage, the absence of the father, single-parent households, structural causes, natural disasters, domestic violence, culture, and government policies are all factors which can contribute to poverty. In addition, poverty has many effects on children, such as lower educational achievement, greater likelihood of abuse, poor environment, and a variety of negative emotions. As children enter their adolescent years, they also often encounter potential substance abuse, violence, teen pregnancy, and STDs. Furthermore, teen pregnancy and connecting factors, such as the absence of the father and drug abuse, contribute to poverty. Sadly, the effects of teen pregnancy are long lasting in many cases, resulting in a cycle of poverty. Lastly, prevention options and a biblical perspective on poverty are discussed

Theatre of the uncanny: Lesbian theatre and the uncanny valley response

This thesis contends that the notion of an uncanny valley can be extended to explain the lack of lesbian presence in the traditional dramatic canon. Because mainstream theatre audiences are unfamiliar with lesbian dramatic representation, lesbian theatre often provokes an uncanny valley response in general audiences and this negative response leads to little commercial success for lesbian plays. This project examines how both the reading of lesbian dramatic literature and the performance analysis of lesbian plays can offer insight into those dominant cultural tenets that not only oppress lesbians in everyday society, but also contribute to their erasure from academic study

A Theory of (the Technological) Mind: Developing Understanding of Robot Minds

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how children attribute minds to social robots and the impacts that these attributions have on children’s interactions with robots, specifically their feelings toward and willingness to trust them. These are important areas of study as robots become increasingly present in children’s lives. The research was designed to address a variety of questions regarding children’s willingness to attribute mental abilities to robots: (1) To what extent do children perceive that social robots share similarities with people and to what extent do they believe they have human-like minds? (2) Do attributions of human-like qualities to robots affect children’s ability to understand and interact with them? (3) Does this understanding influence children’s willingness to accept information from robots? And, of crucial importance, (4) how do answers to these questions vary with age? Across a series of five studies, I investigated children’s beliefs about the minds of robots, and for comparison adults’ beliefs, using survey methods and video stimuli. Children watched videos of real-life robots and in response to targeted questions reported on their beliefs about the minds of those robots, their feelings about those robots, and their willingness to trust information received from those robots. Using a variety of statistical methods (e.g., factor analysis, regression modeling, clustering methods, and linear mixed-effects modeling), I uncovered how attributions of a human-like mind impact feelings toward robots, and trust in information received from robots. Furthermore, I explored how the design of the robot and features of the child relate to attributions of mind to robots. First and foremost, I found that children are willing to attribute human-like mental abilities to robots, but these attributions decline with age. Moreover, attributions of mind are linked to feelings toward robots: Young children prefer robots that appear to have human-like minds, but this reverses with age because older children and adults do not (Chapter II). Young children are also willing to trust a previously accurate robot informant and mistrust a previously inaccurate one, much like they would with accurate and inaccurate human informants, when they believe that the robot has mental abilities related to psychological agency (Chapter III). Finally, while qualities of the robot, like behavior and appearance, are linked to attributions of mind to the robot, individual differences across children and adults are likely the primary mechanisms that explain how and when children and adults attribute mental abilities to robots (Chapter IV). That is, individuals are likely to attribute similar mental abilities to a wide variety of robots that have differing appearances and engage in a variety of different actions. These studies provide a variety of heretofore unknown findings linking the developmental attributions of minds to robots with judgments of robots’ actions, feelings about robots, and learning from robots. It remains to be seen, however, the exact nature of the mechanisms and the child-specific features that increase children’s willingness to attribute mental abilities to robots.PHDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146010/1/kabrink_1.pd

¿Tramposo e injusto? entonces, es humano. Robots sociales educativos y ética sintética

Education begins to make use of emotional artificial intelligence through anthropomorphized educational robots. Evidence supports that students (men and women) are able to create emotional bonds with these agents. However, more and more cases of abusive disinhibition are being found in such interactions, such as racist or sexist degradation, abuse of power and violence. Some researchers warn about the negative consequences that this type of behavior can have in the long term, both for the ethical education of students and for robots that learn from these behaviors. Despite their relevance from a social and educational perspective, there are few studies that attempt to understand the mechanisms underlying these immoral or collectively harmful practices. The aim of this article is to review and analyze the research that has tried to study the unethical behavior of the human being through its interaction with anthropomorphic social robots. A descriptive bibliometric study was carried out following the criteria of the PRISMA declaration. The results show that, under certain circumstances, anthropomorphization and attribution of intentionality to robotic agents could be disadvantageous causing attitudes of rejection, dehumanization and even violence. However, a more realistic view of both the capabilities and limitations of these agents and the mechanisms that guide human behavior could help harness the great potential of this technology to promote students' moral development and ethical awareness.La educación comienza a hacer uso de la inteligencia artificial emocional a través de robots educativos antropomorfizados. La evidencia respalda que los estudiantes (hombres y mujeres) son capaces de crear vínculos emocionales con estos agentes. Sin embargo, cada vez se están encontrando más casos de desinhibición abusiva en este tipo de interacciones, como degradaciones racistas o sexistas, abuso de poder y violencia. Algunos investigadores alertan sobre las consecuencias negativas que este tipo de conductas pueden tener a largo plazo, tanto para la educación ética de los estudiantes como para los robots que aprenden de estas conductas. A pesar de su relevancia desde una perspectiva social y educativa, existen pocos estudios que intenten comprender los mecanismos que subyacen a estas prácticas inmorales o colectivamente dañinas. El objetivo de este artículo es revisar y analizar las investigaciones que han tratado de estudiar el comportamiento antiético del ser humano a través de su interacción con los robots sociales antropomórficos. Se realizó un estudio bibliométrico descriptivo siguiendo los criterios de la declaración PRISMA. Los resultados muestran que, bajo ciertas circunstancias, la antropomorfización y la atribución de intencionalidad a los agentes robóticos podría ser desventajosa, provocando actitudes de rechazo, deshumanización e incluso violencia. Sin embargo, una visión más realista tanto de las capacidades y limitaciones de estos agentes como de los mecanismos que guían la conducta humana podría ayudar a aprovechar el gran potencial de esta tecnología para promover el desarrollo moral y la conciencia ética de los estudiantes

Dobby the Robot: the Science Fiction in \u3ci\u3eHarry Potter\u3c/i\u3e

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke has famously argued that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This paper starts by exploring a few general ways in which science fiction influences Harry Potter, then focuses attention on one key element of science fiction which Potter quite clearly appropriates: the classic trope of the robot or created servant. First, using close textual analysis, the paper traces the robot trope and its accompanying features from its origins in Golem legends and in Shelley\u27s Frankenstein, through classic works of science fiction, including Čapek’s R.U.R., Asimov’s I, Robot, Heinlein’s The Moon is A Harsh Mistress and Lucas’ Star Wars. These features include the humanization of robots, the introduction of ethical considerations regarding personhood through the intervention of empathetic female characters, the chronic and advantageous underestimation of robots, and the narrative function of robots or droids as secret keepers and preservers of memory. Again utilizing a close reading of the texts, the paper identifies these as defining features of Rowling’s house-elves, who defy their fantasy genre and demonstrate science fiction’s unexpected yet profound influence on Potter

Robophobia

Robots-machines, algorithms, artificial intelligence-play an increasingly important role in society, often supplementing or even replacing human judgment. Scholars have rightly become concerned with the fairness, accuracy, and humanity of these systems. Indeed, anxiety about machine bias is at a fever pitch. While these concerns are important, they nearly all run in one direction: we worry about robot bias against humans; we rarely worry about human bias against robots. This is a mistake. Not because robots deserve, in some deontological sense, to be treated fairly-although that may be true-but because our bias against nonhuman deciders is bad for us. For example, it would be a mistake to reject self-driving cars merely because they cause a single fatal accident. Yet all too often this is what we do. We tolerate enormous risk from our fellow humans but almost none from machines. A substantial literature-almost entirely ignored by legal scholars concerned with algorithmic bias-suggests that we routinely prefer worse-performing humans over better-performing robots. We do this on our roads, in our courthouses, in our military, and in our hospitals. Our bias against robots is costly, and it will only get more so as robots become more capable. This Article catalogs the many different forms of antirobot bias and suggests some reforms to curtail the harmful effects of that bias. The Article\u27s descriptive contribution is to develop a taxonomy of robophobia. Its normative contribution is to offer some reasons to be less biased against robots. The stakes could hardly be higher. We are entering an age when one of the most important policy questions will be how and where to deploy machine decision-makers

로봇의 신체 언어가 사회적 특성과 인간 유사성에 미치는 영향

학위논문 (석사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 사회과학대학 심리학과, 2021. 2. Sowon Hahn.The present study investigated the role of robots’ body language on perceptions of social qualities and human-likeness in robots. In experiment 1, videos of a robot’s body language varying in expansiveness were used to evaluate the two aspects. In experiment 2, videos of social interactions containing the body languages in experiment 1 were used to further examine the effects of robots’ body language on these aspects. Results suggest that a robot conveying open body language are evaluated higher on perceptions of social characteristics and human-likeness compared to a robot with closed body language. These effects were not found in videos of social interactions (experiment 2), which suggests that other features play significant roles in evaluations of a robot. Nonetheless, current research provides evidence of the importance of robots’ body language in judgments of social characteristics and human-likeness. While measures of social qualities and human-likeness favor robots that convey open body language, post-experiment interviews revealed that participants expect robots to alleviate feelings of loneliness and empathize with them, which require more diverse body language in addition to open body language. Thus, robotic designers are encouraged to develop robots capable of expressing a wider range of motion. By enabling complex movements, more natural communications between humans and robots are possible, which allows humans to consider robots as social partners.본 연구는 로봇의 신체 언어가 사회적 특성과 인간과의 유사성에 대한 인간의 인식에 미치는 영향을 탐색하였다. 실험 1에서는 로봇의 개방적 신체 언어가 묘사된 영상과 폐쇄적 신체 언어가 묘사된 영상을 통해 이러한 세 가지 측면을 살펴보았다. 실험 2에서는 실험 1의 신체 언어가 포함된 로봇과 사람 간의 상호작용 영상을 활용하여 로봇의 신체 언어가 위 두 가지 측면에 미치는 영향을 탐색하였다. 결과적으로, 사람들은 폐쇄적 신체 언어를 표현하는 로봇에 비해 개방적 신체 언어를 표현하는 로봇을 사회적 특성과 인간과의 유사성에 대한 인식 면에서 더 높게 평가한다는 것을 확인하였다. 그러나 사람과의 상호작용을 담은 영상을 통해서는 이러한 효과가 발견되지 않았으며, 이는 실험 2에 포함된 음성 등의 다른 특징이 로봇에 대한 평가에 중요한 역할을 한다는 것을 시사한다. 그럼에도 불구하고, 본 연구는 로봇의 신체 언어가 사회적 특성 및 인간과의 유사성에 대한 인식의 중요한 요인이 된다는 근거를 제공한다. 사회적 특성과 인간과의 유사성의 척도에서는 개방적 신체 언어를 표현하는 로봇이 더 높게 평가되었지만, 실험 후 인터뷰에서는 로봇이 외로운 감정을 완화하고 공감하기를 기대하는 것으로 나타나 이 상황들에 적절한 폐쇄적 신체 언어 또한 배제할 수 없다고 해석할 수 있다. 이에 따라 본 연구에서는 로봇 디자이너들이 더욱 다양한 범위의 움직임을 표현할 수 있는 로봇을 개발하도록 장려한다. 그렇다면 섬세한 움직임에 따른 자연스러운 의사소통을 통해 인간이 로봇을 사회적 동반자로 인식할 수 있을 것이다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1. Motivation 1 2. Theoretical Background and Previous Research 3 3. Purpose of Study 12 Chapter 2. Experiment 1 13 1. Objective and Hypotheses 13 2. Methods 13 3. Results 21 4. Discussion 31 Chapter 3. Experiment 2 34 1. Objective and Hypotheses 34 2. Methods 35 3. Results 38 4. Discussion 50 Chapter 4. Conclusion 52 Chapter 5. General Discussion 54 References 60 Appendix 70 국문초록 77Maste

Livelihood strategies of street children in Durban : a participatory, rights-based approach to street-based interventions.

Thesis (M.Dev.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.There are a number of different factors that are increasing the numbers of children on the streets in Durban. These factors include globalisation, macro-economic policy, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. On arrival, these children are faced with abuse and harassment, yet in this tough environment, children of the street are able to make a home and live as small family units who employ livelihood strategies in order to survive. The present study investigates whether there are alternatives to the institutionalisation of street children and discusses alternative, rights-based approaches. Furthermore, this study seeks to engage with street children and overcome their homeless, minor status and believes that children of the street have valuable knowledge of their own situation, which if unearthed, can be invaluable when planning future interventions. With this in mind a participatory methodology was employed which encouraged the children to speak for themselves. The present study utilised Participatory Rural Appraisal tools as a way of generating information and insight and it also draws on Participatory Action Research in that it involved young field workers. The present study discovered that children of the street are like other children and poor people in general but are often portrayed as deviants on a way-ward path. In spite of this, children of the street are unswerving in their efforts to survive. The presentation of data reveals that children of the street are generally ingenious and resourceful although their efforts are often hampered by dangers and threats inherent to street life. With this in mind, a community based vulnerability assessment was employed to suggest ways of reducing risk. The present study concludes that a supportive policy environment, a change in attitude and practical recommendations are all needed for improved street-based interventions and the livelihood security of street children