[alicebot-aiethics] in our own image ?

[Tim Barker]

Hi !

Success may not necessarily be judged in terms of length of conversation. 
For example, for a salesperson agent success may be economic gain, i.e. 
persuading a customer to by 'their' product. Another example may be a 
market research agent whose success is measured by the extent of personal 
information it manages to gather. These kinds of agents may use nefarious 
means, potentially seen as immoral by some, to achieve their goals. I don't 
quite know yet what the solution is 'cause this is the Real World. However, 
the virtual world may benefit from some kind of (de facto) ethical 
standards. At least publicising the issues can't do any harm, right ? And I 
guess that's what the list is about ?

Cheers

Tim

At 06:54 23/04/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>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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> > alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org
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>
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Tim Barker Staffordshire U.K.
www.soc.staffs.ac.uk/~cmttimb/