Character mediation of story generation via protagonist insertion

The current study set out to examine how the presence or absence of depicted characters in visual narratives influences the degree of character-related content in improvised stories. The experiment consisted of trials of oral storytelling that were prompted by wordless comics. The degree of character content in the storylines was varied from being character-based—showing people engaging in social interactions—to being characterless, for example scenes depicting natural phenomena. An intermediate “character-implied” condition was also investigated, exemplified by the scene of a tornado passing through a town, where no people were depicted but in which their presence was strongly suggested. Linguistic content analysis of 472 stories demonstrated indistinguishable use of third-person pronouns (she/he) between character-implied and character-containing scenarios. An analysis of character presence demonstrated that storytellers inserted protagonists into the character-implied stories as vehicles for the actions taking place. This phenomenon reveals the character-driven nature of story creation.     

Building Simple Mechanical MindsUsing LEGO® Robots for Research and Teaching in Philosophy

In this essay I discuss how I built a cognitive-robotics lab using inexpensive LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ robot kits. The lab has provided pedagogical and research opportunities for a number of philosophy courses, and I briefly describe the results of those efforts. I also describe how one might build a similar lab. Philosophers need to be more directly involved in the field of robotics. There is much work to do in tidying up the philosophical debris left by the last wave of robotics research, which the researchers have been unwilling or unable to do themselves. The major barriers to participation have been hardware costs and a lack of technical expertise among most philosophers. In recent years, though, these barriers have become less of a problem. At the end, I present some ideas about the kinds of experiments that such kits make possible and how to expand beyond the limitations of the basic LEGO® hardware.     

Moral psychology of nursing robots: Exploring the role of robots in dilemmas of patient autonomy

Artificial intelligences (AIs) are widely used in tasks ranging from transportation to healthcare and military, but it is not yet known how people prefer them to act in ethically difficult situations. In five studies (an anthropological field study, n = 30, and four experiments, total n = 2150), we presented people with vignettes where a human or an advanced robot nurse is ordered by a doctor to forcefully medicate an unwilling patient. Participants were more accepting of a human nurse's than a robot nurse's forceful medication of the patient, and more accepting of (human or robot) nurses who respected patient autonomy rather than those that followed the orders to forcefully medicate (Study 2). The findings were robust against the perceived competence of the robot (Study 3), moral luck (whether the patient lived or died afterwards; Study 4), and command chain effects (Study 5; fully automated supervision or not). Thus, people prefer robots capable of disobeying orders in favour of abstract moral principles like valuing personal autonomy. Our studies fit in a new era in research, where moral psychological phenomena no longer reflect only interactions between people, but between people and autonomous AIs.     

Unveiling the reasoning processes of robots through introspective dialogues in a storytelling system: A study on the elicited empathy

The work studies the empathy elicited by a storytelling system in which the characters in the story are interpreted by humanoid robots and modelled as cognitive agents. The ACT-R architecture is exploited to shape the characters’ personalities and equip them with knowledge and behaviours typical of social practices. The narration is enriched with gestures and emotional expressions obtained by setting parameters that can be correlated to some emotions, such as the pitch and speech rate, the LEDs colour and the head inclination. The system has been evaluated by comparing a simple narrative modality with an enhanced one, where an introspective dialogue is adopted to explain and let transparent the internal reasoning processes of the characters. The obtained results show that storytelling affected the cognitive component of empathy, especially through the advanced narrative mode.     

ONLINE BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

I report the findings of a comparative analysis of online Christian and Buddhist responses to artificial intelligence. I review the Buddhist response and compare it with the Christian response outlined in an earlier essay (Tamatea 2008). The discussion seeks to answer two questions: Which approach to imago Dei informs the online Buddhist response to artificial intelligence? And to what extent does the preference for a particular approach emerge from a desire to construct the Self? The conclusion is that, like the Christian response, the Buddhist response is grounded not so much in the reality of AI as it is in the discursive constructions of AI made available through Buddhist cosmology, which (paradoxically), like the Christian response, are deployed in defense of the Self, despite claimed adherence to the notion of anatta, or non‐Self.     

Validation of the Portuguese version of the Negative Attitudes towards Robots Scale

IntroductionSocial robots are robots capable of a peer-to-peer communication with humans. Nomura, Kanda, and Suzuki (2004) developed the Negative Attitude towards Robots Scale (NARS) to measure the attitudes towards robots. NARS proved to be a useful tool to study human-robot interaction.ObjectiveTo assess the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the NARS (PNARS).Method and resultsFour studies were conducted. In study 1 (n = 300), a principal component analysis showed that PNARS comprised two components: the negative attitudes towards robots with human traits (NARHT) and towards interaction with robots (NATIR). In study 2 (n = 536), a confirmatory factorial analysis was conducted. Results confirmed the two-factor solution of PNARS obtained in study 1. Study 3 (n = 107) tested the nomological validity of PNARS and showed that PNARS, NARHT and NATIR correlated with attitudes towards technology. Study 4 (n = 59) tested the predictive validity of PNARS and showed that scores on NARHT and NATIR predicted the future intention to work with a social robot and its affective and cognitive antecedents.ConclusionGlobally, results indicate that PNARS is a reliable instrument to use in human-robot interaction studies.     

Story Perspective and Character Similarity as Drivers of Identification and Narrative Persuasion

Identification with a character is an important mechanism of narrative persuasion. In 2 studies, the impact of character similarity on identification was pitted against that of story perspective. Participants read stories in which a lawyer (Study 1) and a general practitioner (GP; Study 2) had a conflict with another character. Perspective was manipulated by describing the events as experienced and narrated by the lawyer (GP) or their opponent. In Study 1 (N = 120), 60 participants were law students, in Study 2 (N = 120) 60 were medical students. Both perspective and program of study influenced identification, which mediated the impact of perspective on attitude. If participants felt highly similar to the professional's opponent, the mediating effect of identification was blocked.     

An architecture for ethical robots inspired by the simulation theory of cognition

The expanding ability of robots to take unsupervised decisions renders it imperative that mechanisms are in place to guarantee the safety of their behaviour. Moreover, intelligent autonomous robots should be more than safe; arguably they should also be explicitly ethical. In this paper, we put forward a method for implementing ethical behaviour in robots inspired by the simulation theory of cognition. In contrast to existing frameworks for robot ethics, our approach does not rely on the verification of logic statements. Rather, it utilises internal simulations which allow the robot to simulate actions and predict their consequences. Therefore, our method is a form of robotic imagery. To demonstrate the proposed architecture, we implement a version of this architecture on a humanoid NAO robot so that it behaves according to Asimov’s laws of robotics. In a series of four experiments, using a second NAO robot as a proxy for the human, we demonstrate that the Ethical Layer enables the robot to prevent the human from coming to harm in simple test scenarios.     

Debiasing by instruction: The case of belief bias

Abstract

The study is concerned with the question of whether robust biases in reasoning can be reduced or eliminated by verbal instruction in principles of reasoning. Three experiments are reported in which the effect of instructions upon the belief bias effect in syllogistic reasoning is investigated. Belief bias is most clearly marked by a tendency for subjects to accept invalid conclusions which are a priori believable. Experiment 1 attempted to replicate and extend an experiment reported by Newstead, Pollard, Evans and Allen (1992). In contrast with their experiment, it was found that belief bias was maintained despite the use of augmented instructions which emphasised the principle of logical necessity. Experiment 2 provided an exact replication of the augmented instructions condition of Newstead et al., including the presence of problems with belief-neutral conclusions. Once again, significant effects of conclusion believability were found. A third experiment examined the use of elaborated instructions which lacked specific reference to the notion of logical necessity. The use of these instructions significantly reduced the effects of belief on the reasoning observed.

Taking the current findings together with the experiment of Newstead et al., the overall conclusion is that elaborated instructions can reduce the belief bias effect in syllogistic reasoning, but not eliminate it. This conclusion is discussed with reference to (1) the practical implications for improving thinking and reasoning via verbal instruction and (2) the nature of the belief bias phenomenon.     

RESPONSIVE BODIES: ROBOTS,AI, AND THE QUESTION OF HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS

In this article, we argue two points in relation to the challenge to human distinctiveness emerging as artificial intelligence systems and humanlike robots simulate various human capabilities. First, that, in the context of theological anthropology, it is advisable to respond to this challenge by turning toward the human body. Second, following this point, we propose the responsive body hypothesis, suggesting that what makes us distinct from androids are capacities that rise from and depend on our responsive bodies.