"es is komisch es is keen mensch" - Zuschreibungen gegenüber individualisierten technischen Assistenzsystemen: eine Interviewstudie zum Nutzer/innenerleben in der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion

Individuumszentrierte Mensch-Computer-Interaktion (HCI) gipfelt in Visionen wie der sog. Companion-Systeme. Diese sollen, über Werkzeuge hinausgehend, partnerschaftliche Begleiter ihres/ihrer Nutzers/in darstellen. Ob sie jedoch als solche Partner erlebt werden, hängt davon ab, ob der/die Nutzer/in ihnen Qualitäten wie Empathie oder Vertrauenswürdigkeit zuschreibt. In einer Interviewstudie verfolgen wir dieses konstruktivistische Verständnis des Nutzer/innenerlebens unter Bezug auf einen experimentell erzeugten Individualisierungsdialog. Auf Basis von 31 Initialnarrativen wurden vier Idealtypen - der Unreflektierte, der Bemühte, der Skeptiker und der Selbstzweifler - konstruiert. Sie ermöglichen, Strukturen der Varianz individueller Zuschreibungen und der Emotionen und Handlungen in Reaktion auf diese Zuschreibungen zu verdeutlichen und sinnhaft zu deuten. Die Ergebnisse decken das implizite nutzer/innenseitige Streben danach auf, das System zu einem berechenbaren, vertrauten Gegenüber und potenziellen Beziehungspartner zu machen. Dies wird auf die menschlichen Bedürfnisse nach Sicherheit und Zugehörigkeit zurückgeführt und fließt in eine Spezifizierung des Zuschreibungsverständnisses zum Konzept "beziehungsrelevanter Zuschreibungen" ein. Abschließend werden die Potenziale und Grenzen derartiger, dem technologischen Fortschritt kritisch gegenüberstehender qualitativer Untersuchungen des Nutzer/innenerleben in der HCI diskutiert.Individualization focused human-computer interaction (HCI) culminates in visions like that of so-called Companion-systems. They shall transcend the stage of tools and represent cooperative attendants of their users. However, whether or not they are experienced as such attendants depends on the user ascribing qualities like empathy or trustworthiness to them. In an interview study, we pursue this constructivist understanding of the user experience referring to an experimentally generated individualization focused dialog. Based on 31 initial narratives four ideal types - the Non-reflecting, the Complaisant, the Skeptic and the Selfdoubting - were constructed. These allow to pointing up and reasonably interpreting structures in the variance of individual ascriptions and in users’ emotions and actions in reaction to these ascriptions. Results reveal users’ implicit efforts of making the system a predictable, familiar counterpart and a potential relational partner. This is traced back to the need for safety and the need to belong inherent in humans and is integrated in the specification of the notion of ascriptions to the concept of "relational ascriptions". Finally, potentials and limitations of qualitative user experience studies, which illuminate a critical perspective on the technological progress, are discussed

Criticism and Function in Critical Design Practice

This article focuses on critical design as a field of industrial design practice. It considers some barriers and misconceptions to critical design practice being seen as part of a disciplinary project. The first part of the article reviews the criticism of critical design to identify inadequacies in how the criticism is grounded. Analysis of critical design practice often comes from perspectives developed in art and visual culture discourses. However, analyzing the practice from this perspective has limitations; instead, a more design-centric focus is needed. The second part of the article discusses “function”—a concept often used to ground criticism of critical design practice but, again, one that has limitations. Function offers insufficient grounds for criticism and claims that critical design is not a form of product design because the objects do not “function” in a utilitarian sense. I explore the concept of function to show not only that an object’s function has the potential to extend beyond utility, efficiency, and optimization, but also that even in the strictest modernist sense, function has always comprised characteristics that move into post-optimal realms—beyond efficient use, utility, and practical specifications. I argue instead for an emphasis on the relational, dynamic characteristics of function, which supports seeing, and discussing, critical design practice in the same manner that other examples of orthodox industrial design are discussed

Interpersonal Status Systems. An Inquiry into Social Networks and Status Dynamics in Schools, Science, and Hollywood

Status systems—vertical orders among persons according to differences in social recognition—are a ubiquitous feature of human societies. Vast streams of research developed to explore how status structures social life. This thesis proposes a unified framework for studying the interplay between social status and social networks. The framework highlights the importance of contextual characteristics for the emergence of status systems in various settings and complements approaches that focus on how individuals gain and perpetuate status. Theoretical expectations derived from this perspective are tested by applying a combination of exponential random graph models and other network-analytical tools to three different empirical settings. The first application investigates whether the structure of friendships and status ascriptions among more than 23,000 adolescents is sensitive to contextual characteristics such as the size or demographic composition of classrooms and grade levels. The second study examines collaboration networks among more than 7,000 neuroblastoma researchers over 40 years. Here, the investigation focuses on changes in the stratification and segregation of collaboration networks as a scientific field grows and matures. Similarly, the third study investigates the interplay between culture, status, and networks among Hollywood filmmakers from 1930 through 2000 by using information on artistic references and collaborations of more than 13,000 filmmakers retrieved from the Internet movie database (IMDb). The results illustrate that the link between status and networks intensifies under certain contextual conditions. One key finding is that larger contexts exhibit networks marked by status recognition in all empirical settings: larger school classes and grade levels produce leading crowds more often than smaller ones, the scientific field of neuroblastoma research developed an elite of researchers as it grew, and social recognition is distributed increasingly unequal during periods in which Hollywood attracted more filmmakers. The thesis closes by comparing the different settings in greater detail and by discussing directions for future research

The Eternal Robot: Anchoring Effects in Humans' Mental Models of Robots and Their Self

Current robot designs often reflect an anthropomorphic approach, apparently aiming to convince users through an ideal system, being most similar or even on par with humans. The present paper challenges human-likeness as a design goal and questions whether simulating human appearance and performance adequately fits into how humans think about robots in a conceptual sense, i.e., human's mental models of robots and their self. Independent of the technical possibilities and limitations, our paper explores robots' attributed potential to become human-like by means of a thought experiment. Four hundred eighty-one participants were confronted with fictional transitions from human-to-robot and robot-to-human, consisting of 20 subsequent steps. In each step, one part or area of the human (e.g., brain, legs) was replaced with robotic parts providing equal functionalities and vice versa. After each step, the participants rated the remaining humanness and remaining self of the depicted entity on a scale from 0 to 100%. It showed that the starting category (e.g., human, robot) serves as an anchor for all former judgments and can hardly be overcome. Even if all body parts had been exchanged, a former robot was not perceived as totally human-like and a former human not as totally robot-like. Moreover, humanness appeared as a more sensible and easier denied attribute than robotness, i.e., after the objectively same transition and exchange of the same parts, the former human was attributed less humanness and self left compared to the former robot's robotness and self left. The participants' qualitative statements about why the robot has not become human-like, often concerned the (unnatural) process of production, or simply argued that no matter how many parts are exchanged, the individual keeps its original entity. Based on such findings, we suggest that instead of designing most human-like robots in order to reach acceptance, it might be more promising to understand robots as an own "species" and underline their specific characteristics and benefits. Limitations of the present study and implications for future HRI research and practice are discussed

Ascribing consciousness to artificial intelligence: human-AI interaction and its carry-over effects on human-human interaction

The question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) can be considered conscious and therefore should be evaluated through a moral lens has surfaced in recent years. In this paper, we argue that whether AI is conscious is less of a concern than the fact that AI can be considered conscious by users during human-AI interaction, because this ascription of consciousness can lead to carry-over effects on human-human interaction. When AI is viewed as conscious like a human, then how people treat AI appears to carry over into how they treat other people due to activating schemas that are congruent to those activated during interactions with humans. In light of this potential, we might consider regulating how we treat AI, or how we build AI to evoke certain kinds of treatment from users, but not because AI is inherently sentient. This argument focuses on humanlike, social actor AI such as chatbots, digital voice assistants, and social robots. In the first part of the paper, we provide evidence for carry-over effects between perceptions of AI consciousness and behavior toward humans through literature on human-computer interaction, human-AI interaction, and the psychology of artificial agents. In the second part of the paper, we detail how the mechanism of schema activation can allow us to test consciousness perception as a driver of carry-over effects between human-AI interaction and human-human interaction. In essence, perceiving AI as conscious like a human, thereby activating congruent mind schemas during interaction, is a driver for behaviors and perceptions of AI that can carry over into how we treat humans. Therefore, the fact that people can ascribe humanlike consciousness to AI is worth considering, and moral protection for AI is also worth considering, regardless of AI’s inherent conscious or moral status

Ethics at the Frontier of Human-AI Relationships

The idea that humans might one day form persistent and dynamic relationships in professional, social, and even romantic contexts is a longstanding one. However, developments in machine learning and especially natural language processing over the last five years have led to this possibility becoming actualised at a previously unseen scale. Apps like Replika, Xiaoice, and CharacterAI boast many millions of active long-term users, and give rise to emotionally complex experiences. In this paper, I provide an overview of these developments, beginning in Section 1 with historical and technical context. In Section 2, I lay out a basic theoretical framework for classifying human-AI relationships and their specific dynamics. Section 3 turns to ethical issues, with a focus on the core philosophical question of whether human-AI relationships can have similar intrinsic value to that possessed by human-human relationships. Section 4 extends to the discussion of ethical issues to the more empirical matter of harms and benefits of human-AI relationships. The paper concludes by noting potentially instructive parallels between the nascent field of ‘Social AI’ and the recent history of social media

Korsgaard's Constitutivism Reframed: Elucidating Agency's Practical Normativity

This dissertation aims to critique and extend upon Christine Korsgaard’s theory of agency. Unlike much of the burgeoning literature engaging with Korsgaard’s work that addresses the metanormative ambitions of her argument, the scope of the present analysis is her first-order metaphysical account of agency. Instances of so-called “disorders of agency,” and “socially displaced agency”—exemplifying the problem of defective actions—are examined, and evidence for considering these cases as genuine instantiations of agency is presented and discussed. The conclusion is that Korsgaard’s constitutive norms of agency seem to be neither necessary nor sufficient to properly account for them, which points to the need for a clarification of the metaphysics of agency and of constitutive normativity. In particular, in light of the Disorders scenario, arguments are brought against Korsgaard’s assimilation of the practical normativity of agency to moral normativity, and the notion of agential responsibility predicated upon Hanna Pickard’s articulation of responsibility without blame is advanced. The analysis of both cases, however, corroborates Korsgaard’s relational account of responsibility as answerability, on which the dissertation builds a reframing and extension of her theory of agency. A conceptual elucidation of the notion of constitutive normativity is pursued, and the distinction between socially-generated constitutive normativity and non-practice-based constitutive normativity is introduced. The view of an interactionist approach to agency is laid out, by indicating three central components of a first-order constitutivist theory of agency: i) the necessity of a scalar approach, ii) relationality, and iii) context sensitivity and situatedness. The reframing of Korsgaard’s account advanced here is unique in two respects. First, it suggests incorporating aspects of G. E. M. Anscombe’s seminal work on intention—interpreted as an outward-looking and interactional/dialogical approach. Second, and congruently, the notion of intersubjective recognition is introduced as a necessary component for the characterization of the social constitution of agency

Robot, let us pray! Can and should robots have religious functions?:An ethical exploration of religious robots

Considerable progress is being made in robotics, with robots being developed for many different areas of life: there are service robots, industrial robots, transport robots, medical robots, household robots, sex robots, exploration robots, military robots, and many more. As robot development advances, an intriguing question arises: should robots also encompass religious functions? Religious robots could be used in religious practices, education, discussions, and ceremonies within religious buildings. This article delves into two pivotal questions, combining perspectives from philosophy and religious studies: can and should robots have religious functions? Section 2 initiates the discourse by introducing and discussing the relationship between robots and religion. The core of the article (developed in Sects. 3 and 4) scrutinizes the fundamental questions: can robots possess religious functions, and should they? After an exhaustive discussion of the arguments, benefits, and potential objections regarding religious robots, Sect. 5 addresses the lingering ethical challenges that demand attention. Section 6 presents a discussion of the findings, outlines the limitations of this study, and ultimately responds to the dual research question. Based on the study’s results, brief criteria for the development and deployment of religious robots are proposed, serving as guidelines for future research. Section 7 concludes by offering insights into the future development of religious robots and potential avenues for further research

The conceptual structure of product semantic models

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 21/09/1999.The study is concerned with the conceptual structure and content of the framework for characterising user-product interaction, proposed under the title – ‘Product Semantics’. The sources for the critique of design, from which the framework is derived, are identified and analysed, and the substantive theoretical and methodological content given initial consideration in terms of the deployment of the central concept of ‘meaning’, and the principal theoretical approaches adopted in the analysis of meaning and semantic concepts generally. The commitment to a cognitive and experiential approach to user-interaction is established and the concepts central to the framework, and requiring more detailed analysis, are identified. The core of the study consists in an analysis of the sequence of concepts and contexts that are chiefly used in the theoretical articulation of the framework, including - function, affordance, categorisation, artefacts, meaning and expression - of which the concept of affordance is central to the structure. On the basis of the initial consideration of the structure and content of the scheme, and in the light of the analysis of concepts, the explanatory structure of the framework is established. It is argued that the core commitment to an experiential and cognitive account, and the form of the explanatory structure, are jointly incompatible with the conceptual content of the framework, particularly in respect of the pivotal role of the concept of affordance. Proposals are advanced for an alternative interpretation which addresses the central issues of consistency and coherence, and which suggests an alternative approach to the conceptual characterisation of the framework and the form of the explanatory hierarchy. The implications of the framework, and the proposed alternative interpretation, are considered in respect of their application in shaping approaches to the development of design theory and methodology, and the experiential aspect of semantics and cognition