Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues

338 Pages·2010·4.192 MB·Natural Language Processing 8

by  Yorick Wilks (editor)

Close Engagements with Artificial Companions
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The scope of NLP ranges from theoretical Computational Linguistics topics
to highly practical Language Technology topics. The focus of the series is on
new results in NLP and modern alternative theories and methodologies.
Editor
Ruslan Mitkov
University of Wolverhampton
SLES
Stafford St
WOLVERHAMPTON, WV1 1SB, UK
E-mail: [email protected]
Advisory Board
Christian Boitet Andrei Mikheev Key-Yih Su
University of Grenoble University of Edinburgh Behaviour Design Corp.
John Carroll John Nerbonne Isabel Trancoso
University of Sussex, Brighton University of Groningen INESC, Lisbon
Eugene Charniak Nicolas Nicolov Benjamin Tsou
Brown University, Providence Umbria Inc., Boulder City University of Hong Kong
Eduard Hovy Kemal Oflazer Junichi Tsujii
Information Sciences Institute, Sabanci University University of Tokyo
USC
Allan Ramsey Evelyne Tzoukermann
Richard Kittredge UMIST, Manchester Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
University of Montreal
Monique Rolbert Yorick Wilks
Geoffrey N. Leech Universite de Marseille University of Sheffield
Lancaster University
Richard Sproat
Carlos Martín-Vide AT&T Labs Research,
Rovira i Virgili Un., Tarragona Florham Park
Editorial Assistant
Miranda Chong
Volume 8
Close Engagements with Artificial Companions. Key social, psychological, ethical
and design issues
Edited by Yorick Wilks
Close Engagements
with Artificial Companions
Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues
Edited by
Yorick Wilks
University of Oxford
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Close engagements with artificial companions : key social, psychological, ethical and design
issues / edited by Yorick Wilks.
p. cm. (Natural Language Processing, issn 1567-8202 ; v. 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Human-computer interaction. 2. Natural language processing (Computer science) 3.
Artificial intelligence. I. Wilks, Yorick, 1939-
QA76.9.H85C44115 2010
006.3--dc22 2009048316
isbn 978 90 272 4994 4 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8840 0 (Eb)
© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
For Roberta and the children,
for everything, as always

Table of contents
Foreword xi
Acknowledgements xii
Contributors xiii
Section I. Setting the scene
In good company? On the threshold of robotic companions 3
Sherry Turkle
Introducing artificial Companions 11
Yorick Wilks
Section II. Ethical and philosophical issues
Artificial Companions and their philosophical challenges 23
Luciano Floridi
Conditions for Companionhood 29
Stephen G. Pulman
Arius in cyberspace: Digital Companions and the limits of the person 35
Kieron O’Hara
Section III. Social and psychological issues: What should
a Companion be like?
Conversationalists and confidants 59
Margaret A. Boden
Robots should be slaves 63
Joanna J. Bryson
viii Close Engagements with Artificial Companions
Wanting the impossible: The dilemma at the heart of intimate
human-robot relationships 75
Dylan Evans
Falling in love with a Companion 89
David Levy
Identifying your accompanist 95
Will Lowe
Look, emotion, language and behavior
in a believable virtual Companion 101
Daniela M. Romano
New Companions 107
Alex Taylor, Anab Jain and Laurel Swan
On being a Victorian Companion 121
Yorick Wilks
Section IV. Design issues: Building a Companion
The use of affective and attentive cues in an empathic
computer-based Companions 131
Nikolaus Bee, Elisabeth Andre, Thurid Vogt
and Patrick Gebhard
GRETA: Towards an interactive conversational virtual Companion 143
Elisabetta Bevacqua, Ken Prepin, Radoslaw Niewiadomski,
Etienne de Sevin and Catherine Pelachaud
A world-hybrid approach to a conversational Companion
for reminiscing about images 157
Roberta Catizone, Simon F. Worgan, Yorick Wilks,
Alexiei Dingli and Weiwei Cheng
Companionship is an emotional business 169
Roddy Cowie
Artificial Companions in society: Consulting the users 173
Alan Newell
Requirements for Artificial Companions: It’s harder than you think 179
Aaron Sloman
Table of contents ix
You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you 201
Alan FT Winfield
Section V. Special purpose Companions
A Companion for learning in everyday life 211
Rebecca Eynon and Chris Davies
The Maryland virtual patient as a task-oriented
conversational Companion 221
Sergei Nirenburg
Living with robots: Ethical tradeoffs in eldercare 245
Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey
Section VI. Afterword 257
Summary and discussion of the issues 259
Malcom Peltu and Yorick Wilks
References 287
Index 309