Fostering Effective Human-AI Collaboration: Bridging the Gap Between User-Centric Design and Ethical Implementation

The synergy between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems has become pivotal in contemporary technological landscapes. This research paper delves into the multifaceted domain of Human-AI collaboration, aiming to decipher the intricate interplay between user-centric design and ethical implementation. As AI systems continue to permeate various facets of society, the significance of seamless interaction and ethical considerations has emerged as a critical axis for exploration. This study critically examines the pivotal components of successful Human-AI collaboration, emphasizing the importance of user experience design that prioritizes intuitive interfaces and transparent interactions. Furthermore, ethical implications encompassing privacy, fairness, bias mitigation, and accountability in AI decision-making are thoroughly investigated, emphasizing the imperative need for responsible AI deployment. The paper presents an analysis of diverse scenarios where Human-AI collaboration manifests, elucidating the impact on various sectors such as education, healthcare, workforce augmentation, and problem-solving domains. Insights into the cognitive augmentation offered by AI systems and the consequential implications on human decision-making processes are also probed, offering a comprehensive understanding of collaborative problem-solving and decision support mechanisms. Through an integrative approach merging user-centric design philosophies and ethical frameworks, this research advocates for a paradigm shift in AI development. It underscores the necessity of incorporating user feedback, participatory design methodologies, and transparent ethical guidelines into the development life cycle of AI systems. Ultimately, the paper proposes a roadmap towards fostering a symbiotic relationship between humans and AI, fostering trust, reliability, and enhanced performance in collaborative endeavors. This abstract outline the scope, key areas of investigation, and proposed outcomes of a research paper centered on Human-AI collaboration, providing a glimpse into the depth and breadth of the study

Avoiding the uncanny valley : robot appearance, personality and consistency of behavior in an attention-seeking home scenario for a robot companion

“The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com”. Copyright Springer. DOI: 10.1007/s10514-007-9058-3This article presents the results of video-based Human Robot Interaction (HRI) trials which investigated people’s perceptions of different robot appearances and associated attention-seeking features and behaviors displayed by robots with different appearance and behaviors. The HRI trials studied the participants’ preferences for various features of robot appearance and behavior, as well as their personality attributions towards the robots compared to their own personalities. Overall, participants tended to prefer robots with more human-like appearance and attributes. However, systematic individual differences in the dynamic appearance ratings are not consistent with a universal effect. Introverts and participants with lower emotional stability tended to prefer the mechanical looking appearance to a greater degree than other participants. It is also shown that it is possible to rate individual elements of a particular robot’s behavior and then assess the contribution, or otherwise, of that element to the overall perception of the robot by people. Relating participants’ dynamic appearance ratings of individual robots to independent static appearance ratings provided evidence that could be taken to support a portion of the left hand side of Mori’s theoretically proposed ‘uncanny valley’ diagram. Suggestions for future work are outlined.Peer reviewe

Collaboration and competition in groups of humans and robots: effects on socioemotional and task-oriented behaviors

Advancements in technology have allowed the emergence of novel forms of social interaction. More specifically, in the last decades, the emergence of social robots has triggered a multidisciplinary effort towards achieving a better understanding of how humans and robots interact. In this dissertation, our goal was to contribute towards that effort by considering the role of goal orientation displayed by the robot (i.e. competitive vs. cooperative) and the role displayed by each player (partners and opponents). Sixty participants engaged in a typical Portuguese card-game called Sueca (two robots and two humans). Each participant played three games with each of the other players and the goal orientation was manipulated by the set of pre-validated verbal utterances displayed by the robot. The interactions were video-recorded, and we used a coding scheme based on Bales Interaction Process Analysis (1950) for small groups to analyze socioemotional positive, negative and task-oriented behaviors. A MultiLevel Modelling analysis yielded a significant effect of the role for all dimensions. Participants directed more socioemotional positive and task-oriented behaviors towards the human playing as a partner than as opponent and also interacted more with the other human in comparison to both robots. Comparing both robots, participants displayed more positive and task-oriented behaviors when interacting with robots as opponents than as partners. These results suggest the occurrence of different behavioral patterns in competitive and collaborative interactions with robots, that might be useful to inform the future development of more socially effective robots.O desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias tem proporcionado a emergência de novas formas de interação social. Mais especificamente, nas últimas décadas, o desenvolvimento de robôs sociais tem despoletado um esforço interdisciplinar orientado para o estabelecimento de uma melhor compreensão acerca da forma como pessoas e robôs interagem. Com esta dissertação, pretendemos contribuir para esse esforço considerando o efeito da orientação estratégica exibida pelo robô (i.e. competitivo vs. colaborativo) e o efeito do papel assumido pelos jogadores (parceiro ou oponente). Sessenta participantes jogaram à Sueca (dois robôs e dois humanos). Cada participante jogou três jogos em parceria com cada um dos outros jogadores e a orientação estratégica foi manipulada através do conjunto pré-validado de interações verbais exibido pelos robôs. As interações foram filmadas e analisadas usando o guião de análise sugerido por Bales (1950) que inclui interações socioemocionais negativas, positivas e relacionadas com a tarefa. Uma análise Multi-nível dos resultados revelou um efeito principal do papel para todas as dimensões. Os participantes dirigiram mais comportamentos positivos e relacionados com a tarefa para os humanos no papel de parceiros do que oponentes e interagiram mais frequentemente com o humano do que com os robôs. Os participantes também direcionaram mais interações positivas e relacionadas com a tarefa para os robôs quando estes assumiram o papel de oponentes, em comparação com quando jogaram como parceiros. Estes resultados sugerem a ocorrência de diferentes padrões comportamentais quando interagindo com robôs competitivos e colaborativos que poderão ser úteis para informar o desenvolvimento de robôs mais socialmente eficazes

Indices for Virtual Service Agent Design: Cross-Cultural Evaluation

While localization helps to create websites and mobile apps for specific target markets, not as much attention was devoted to the area of affective virtual service agents. The situation is changing due to advances in affective computing and artificial intelligence. Virtual service agents have the potential to change the way how people interact with information technology by transforming control method from physical gestures to natural language conversation. By having human-like characteristics, the agents can transform impersonal service experience to personal and make an emotional impression on the user or customer. Such message can take different forms and interpretations, depending on national culture and other context. Qualitative data from interviews with experts were used to identify differences in how they are viewed in Sweden and Japan. A survey was then used to quantify the differences using a sample of participants, who were asked to rate the likability and trustworthiness of agents with varying ethnicity, gender and age. The impact of visible visual attributes on their trustworthiness and likability is analysed on a familiar example with virtual service agents at an airport. It was found that each group favours their familiar communication style and recommendations on virtual service agent localization are given

Taux : a system for evaluating sound feedback in navigational tasks

This thesis presents the design and development of an evaluation system for generating audio displays that provide feedback to persons performing navigation tasks. It first develops the need for such a system by describing existing wayfinding solutions, investigating new electronic location-based methods that have the potential of changing these solutions and examining research conducted on relevant audio information representation techniques. An evaluation system that supports the manipulation of two basic classes of audio display is then described. Based on prior work on wayfinding with audio display, research questions are developed that investigate the viability of different audio displays. These are used to generate hypotheses and develop an experiment which evaluates four variations of audio display for wayfinding. Questions are also formulated that evaluate a baseline condition that utilizes visual feedback. An experiment which tests these hypotheses on sighted users is then described. Results from the experiment suggest that spatial audio combined with spoken hints is the best approach of the approaches comparing spatial audio. The test experiment results also suggest that muting a varying audio signal when a subject is on course did not improve performance. The system and method are then refined. A second experiment is conducted with improved displays and an improved experiment methodology. After adding blindfolds for sighted subjects and increasing the difficulty of navigation tasks by reducing the arrival radius, similar comparisons were observed. Overall, the two experiments demonstrate the viability of the prototyping tool for testing and refining multiple different audio display combinations for navigational tasks. The detailed contributions of this work and future research opportunities conclude this thesis

Information Outlook, June 1997

Volume 1, Issue 6https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_1997/1005/thumbnail.jp

Digital Scripture: An Investigation of the Design and Use of a Mobile Application for Reading Sacred Text

Digital sacred text reading is rapidly growing as digital devices such as mobile smartphones are becoming more common across the globe. Although sacred text can have strong influence on identify and behavior, the effects of a digital revolution on scripture reading practices are not well understood. In particular, current research literature indicates that more information is needed about the design and use of digital sacred text applications (apps) such as mobile Bibles across different religious groups or cultures. Therefore, this study builds upon and extends previous work to analyze a religious text app, Gospel Library, which is designed and largely used by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Data about the design of the app were collected by analyzing app store description text, conducting a technical app walkthrough, and interviewing current app design team members. Data about the usage of Gospel Library were collected by gaining permission from the design organization to access user analytic data collected during normal app operations. Results of the study show that this digital sacred text app is designed and used in ways that support religious or cultural reading values and norms. In particular, this study suggests that Latter-day Saints appear to value the King James Version of the English Bible and other unique religious text such as the Book of Mormon and General Conference sermons or messages. Results also suggest Latter-day Saints value church-wide directed scripture reading efforts situated in a culture of listening and receiving interpretation as opposed to social discussions of scripture. Furthermore, this study reports unique features or affordances that digital sacred texts can offer including audio capabilities, videos, search functions, sharing, highlighting, and other annotations. This study contributes to the research field of digital sacred text literacy by offering data gathered from an app design organization including interviews and user analytic data. It also adds to the broader conversation about religious literacy and digital versus print-based reading

Robust Dialog Management Through A Context-centric Architecture

This dissertation presents and evaluates a method of managing spoken dialog interactions with a robust attention to fulfilling the human user’s goals in the presence of speech recognition limitations. Assistive speech-based embodied conversation agents are computer-based entities that interact with humans to help accomplish a certain task or communicate information via spoken input and output. A challenging aspect of this task involves open dialog, where the user is free to converse in an unstructured manner. With this style of input, the machine’s ability to communicate may be hindered by poor reception of utterances, caused by a user’s inadequate command of a language and/or faults in the speech recognition facilities. Since a speech-based input is emphasized, this endeavor involves the fundamental issues associated with natural language processing, automatic speech recognition and dialog system design. Driven by ContextBased Reasoning, the presented dialog manager features a discourse model that implements mixed-initiative conversation with a focus on the user’s assistive needs. The discourse behavior must maintain a sense of generality, where the assistive nature of the system remains constant regardless of its knowledge corpus. The dialog manager was encapsulated into a speech-based embodied conversation agent platform for prototyping and testing purposes. A battery of user trials was performed on this agent to evaluate its performance as a robust, domain-independent, speech-based interaction entity capable of satisfying the needs of its users

SEPEC conference proceedings: Hypermedia and Information Reconstruction. Aerospace applications and research directions. Addendum

The papers presented at the conference on hypermedia and information reconstruction are compiled. The following subject areas are covered: hypertext, typographic man, and the notion of literacy; a knowledge base browser using hypermedia; Ai GERM - a logic programming front end for GERM; and HEAVENS system for software artifacts