Artificial Intelligence Is No Match for Human Stupidity: Ethical Reflections on Avatars and Agents

What should our ethical concerns be in a future with ‘Artificially Intelligent’ agents? The zeitgeist of AI agents often envisions a future encompassing a hyper intelligent singularity. In this worldview, AI “monsters” appear very separate from us as, abstracted, ethically ungrounded omnipotent overlords. A world of superintelligences that have moved beyond our comprehension, with no ethical restraint. In this polemic, I explore a different future. I examine how realistic digital humans pose a very real ethical dilemma, as we assume intelligence based on their appearance, leading to an abdication of responsibility. I explore the future of realistic digital agents and avatars, and ask: what does this human-like form say about us? How will we judge ourselves when the computer, looks like us? I argue that the singularity is unlikely and thus the primary ethical concern is not some superhuman AI intelligence, but in how we, ourselves, treat these digital humans

Hello Computer: Towards a Research Agenda for Conceptualising “Presence” in Human-Computer Engagement

Technological developments are bringing interactive computer agents, such as Apple’s Siri, into our everyday lives and routines. These interactive agents are designed to be the focus of our interactions – we can feel “present” with them. Yet current theories of “presence” in IS do not account for the question of what it means to be present with technology in an experiential sense. In response we draw on existential philosophy in order to generate a research agenda for conceptualising presence in the context of what we term human-computer engagement. We suggest that research from this new perspective requires focusing on the situated interaction rather than an a-priori assessment of the entities involved. We conclude by considering the ethical questions that emerge when technology is experienced as being an independent agent with which one can be present

Towards a research agenda for adopting Agile Project Management in Creative Industries

Agile Project Management (APM) has gained strong acceptance in software development but its adoption in other industries has not been as swift. We look at the visual effects (VFX) component of the film industry to explore this issue. Using an abductive research approach combined with a survey of existing practices, we aim to investigate an industry whose projects are large, expensive and time critical. Our study hopes to show that VFX companies exhibit many characteristics conducive to APM adoption but it is only within their internal software development teams that they explicitly state their use of APM. We explore why these companies, who exhibit predisposed adoption characteristics use something other than Agile for their non-software related projects. In exploring this surprising position, we hope to gain insights into how other industries may adopt APM and to set a research agenda for APM in non-software development creative companies

Virtual Visitation: Conceptualization and Metrics for Digital Twinning of Large Interactive Social Events

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a move towards digital engagement in many parts of life. At the same time, it has halted large public gatherings such as music, sports or arts events. In this paper we discuss opportunities for such large-scale social events to create digital experiences that mirror, mimic or enhance traditional experiences, with new forms of digital twinning. Originating from the world of manufacturing, and popularized by the Industry 4.0 initiative, digital twins refer to the creation of digital representations of physical entities. In the context of large social events digital twins denote digital spaces inhabitable by visitors with their own digital twins in the form of avatars. In this paper we investigate how event coordinators can account for different kinds of social engagements in digital twinning spaces. We develop a framework for user interactions along two dimensions: interactions with the space itself, and social interactions between virtual visitors (avatars). Accounting for virtual visitations is more challenging but offers unique opportunities compared to traditional attendance. We present four new metrics, Views, Visits, Engagement, and Involvement, and we discuss considerations for implementing advanced digital social events

Managing the Magic behind the Movies. ACAMP: The Applicability of Agile Project Management to the Visual Effects Industry

Visual effects (VFX) are a cornerstone of modern filmmaking, yet research into their management approaches is still significantly limited. Agile project management (APM) is widely seen as being the most effective project management approach in technology-reliant, and innovative environments, all of which are characteristics commonly found in the VFX industry. We conducted a series of interviews to understand the extent to which APM techniques have been applied in the VFX industry, considering the theoretical transferability of APM to such non-software focused, creative teams. The interviews were conducted with a range of VFX professionals who differed in country of origin, seniority, background, gender, and the size of the companies they worked for. We identified an overall alignment of current management practice to core APM axioms, yet there is only a partial adoption of an existing formalised agile methodologies. We also identified a consistent set of adaptive and responsive PM practices across a diverse range of companies. We hypothesise that there exists a previously unidentified incarnation of Agile we have named Adapted Creative Agile Management of Projects (ACAMP)

Shared Experiences

Disciplines often approach phenomena from different perspectives and with different research tools. We offer this example of our efforts to embrace the wider CHI values through the exploration of emotive digital humans deployed in HCI. We designed and conducted an HCI experiment with mixed methods. In building an infrastructure that benefits from the strengths of both AIS SIGHCI and ACM SIGCHI research communities, we chose an approach that could reveal undisclosed worlds, hard to see from just one perspective. As technology offers HCI digital humans, new combined shared approaches may be needed to gain insights, especially prior to their wide scale deployment. As bridging related disciplines has failed in the past, perhaps a new approach is needed, one of shared experiences, especially when exploring new technological phenomeno

Actors, Avatars and Agents: Potentials and Implications of Natural Face Technology for the Creation of Realistic Visual Presence

We are on the cusp of creating realistic, interactive, fully rendered human faces on computers that transcend the “uncanny valley,” widely known for capturing the phenomenon of “eeriness” in faces that are almost, but not fully realistic. Because humans are hardwired to respond to faces in uniquely positive ways, artificial realistic faces hold great promise for advancing human interaction with machines. For example, realistic avatars will enable presentation of human actors in virtual collaboration settings with new levels of realism; artificial natural faces will allow the embodiment of cognitive agents, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, putting us on a path to create “artificial human” entities in the near future. In this conceptual paper, we introduce natural face technology (NFT) and its potential for creating realistic visual presence (RVP), a sensation of presence in interaction with a digital actor, as if present with another human. We contribute a forward-looking research agenda to information systems (IS) research, comprising terminology, early conceptual work, concrete ideas for research projects, and a broad range of research questions for engaging with this emerging, transformative technology as it becomes available for application. By doing so, we respond to calls for “blue ocean research” that explores unchartered territory and makes a novel technology accessible to IS early in its application. We outline promising areas of application and foreshadow philosophical, ethical, and conceptual questions for IS research pertaining to the more speculative phenomena of “living with artificial humans.

Las comunicaciones de crisis en un mundo cambiante

This anide focuses on the characteristics of a crisis, and examines the new tendencies that have changed the way in which any management should respond and communicate whenin crisis. After defining che meaning of crisis, che three key factors of a crisis that should be included in the fores ighr plan are analyzed, namely: a) crisis should be handled openly; b)acknowledge that any insight on the evcnts will replace the actual facts; and, e) any gap in the information flow will be fi lled wirh rumors, speculations, prejudgmcnts, and accusations made by "cxperrs" or leaders of opinion. The Toyota case - experienced at rhe beginning of the USA's crisis - is ser as an example of recent ill insight. To conclude, chis article provides guidelines for communicators of crisis, and highlights the need to be ready and prepared to face any eventual crisis of companies or insri tucions.El presente artículo se centra en las características de la crisis, y examina las tendencias recientes que han forjado un cambio en la manera en que la gerencia debe responder y comunicar. Deslinda el significado de crisis, luego analiza los tres factores clave de la crisis, que deben estar contenidos en el plan de previsión: primero, la crisis debe manejarse a laluz pública; segundo, reconocer que las percepciones reemplazan a los hechos, y tercero, todo vacío en el flujo de info rmación es llenado con rumores, especulaciones, prejuicios yacusaciones, a cargo, algunas veces, de "expertos" o líderes de opinión. Como ejemplo de percepciones recientes, menciona el caso Toyota, al inicio de la crisis de EEUU. Finalmente, da pautas para los comunicadores en situaciones de crisis, planteando la necesidad de alistarse y estar preparados para hacer frente a cualquier eventualidad de crisis de las empresas o instituciones

Non-global logarithms in inter-jet energy flow with kt clustering requirement

Recent work in inter-jet energy flow has identified a class of leading logarithms previously not considered in the literature. These so-called non-global logarithms have been shown to have significant numerical impact on gaps-between-jets calculations at the energies of current particle colliders. Here we calculate, at fixed order and to all orders, the effect of applying clustering to the gluonic final state responsible for these logarithms for a trivial colour flow 2 jet system. Such a clustering algorithm has already been used for experimental measurements at HERA. We find that the impact of the non-global logarithms is reduced, but not removed, when clustering is demanded, a result which is of considerable interest for energy flow observable calculations.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Face It, Users Don’t Care: Affinity and Trustworthiness of Imperfect Digital Humans

Digital humans are growing in application and popularity, both as avatars for people and as standalone artificial intelligence-controlled agents. While the technology to make a digital human look more realistic is improving, we know little about how realistic they need to be. Humans are exceptionally good at identifying imperfect digital reproductions of human faces, so it has been reasoned that the slightest imperfections in the visual design of digital humans may translate into reduced acceptance and effectiveness. The broadly held wisdom is that digital humans should be photorealistic and indistinguishable from real people. To examine this common belief we collected data on individuals’ affinity and trustworthiness in photorealistic digital humans when engaged in a product bidding situation, along with a human presenter with varying degrees of video imperfections. The results reveal that participants noticed some of the video imperfections, but this did not adversely affect their willingness to pay, affinity, or trust. We found that once digital humans become close to realistic, users simply do not care about visual imperfection