[alicebot-aiethics] in our own image ?

[Dr. Richard S. Wallace]

Bots can indeed be programmed with antisocial personalities.  But I have
always relied on dialogue length as a measure of progress.   ALICE tries to
keep the client talking as long as possible.   Generally, the client will
respond better to polite or flattering remarks than to abusive language.

Rich

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Barker" <timothy.barker@staffs.ac.uk>
To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2002 3:47 PM
Subject: [alicebot-aiethics] in our own image ?


> Hi list !
>
> I've had cause to recently think about ethical aspects of anthropomorphic
> agents. I was attending a workshop in London entitled "Animating
Expressive
> Characters for Social Interactions". Various agent implementations were
> discussed and demonstrated with some very interesting and particularly
> entertaining results. However, one thought in particular related to
> behaviours expressed by some of the agents and reported of others by
> attendees which seemed to reinforce societal practices deemed
> discriminatory/offensive etc. The last thing I want to do is be prudish or
> politically correct for the sake of it but I think certain personality
> traits amongst agents may need to be considered more carefully. For
> example, one of the conference delegates reported a male agent which
> demonstrated sexist behaviour. Another reported an agent which
demonstrated
> a propensity towards interrupting a conversation. Now, some of this
> behaviour may, indeed, be counterproductive. For instance, a female
> customer dealing with a website's front desk attendant may not stay around
> too long if faced with a sexist, belittling attitude. Furthermore, a
> student may decide to disengage with an instructional agent in a virtual
> learning environment who insisted on interrupting all the time !
> Nonetheless, it may be tempting to mimic these offensive behaviours in our
> virtual agents in an attempt to create 'realistic' personifications. I
just
> think though that we don't need to reflect the wealth of antisocial
> behaviour we find in the real world in the artificial ones that we're
> creating. Of course, this statement stinks of liberal utopianism, maybe,
> but I do objectively believe that we're in a position to right a few
wrongs
> on this new frontier.
>
> What do others think ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tim
>
> Tim Barker Staffordshire U.K.
> www.soc.staffs.ac.uk/~cmttimb/
>
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