An official website of the United States government
Explanations of AI Agents' actions are considered to be an important factor in improving users' trust in the decisions made by autonomous AI systems. However, as these autonomous systems evolve from reactive, i.e., acting on user input, to proactive, i.e., acting without requiring user intervention, there is a need to explore how the explanation for the actions of these agents should evolve. In this work, we explore the design of explanations through participatory design methods for a proactive auto-response messaging agent that can reduce perceived obligations and social pressure to respond quickly to incoming messages by providing unavailability-related context. We recruited 14 participants who worked in pairs during collaborative design sessions where they reasoned about the agent's design and actions. We qualitatively analyzed the data collected through these sessions and found that participants' reasoning about agent actions led them to speculate heavily on its design. These speculations significantly influenced participants' desire for explanations and the controls they sought to inform the agents' behavior. Our findings indicate a need to transform users' speculations into accurate mental models of agent design. Further, since the agent acts as a mediator in human-human communication, it is also necessary to account for social norms in its explanation design. Finally, user expertise in understanding their habits and behaviors allows the agent to learn from the user their preferences when justifying its actions.
more »
« less
An enactivist account of the dynamics of lying
Enactivist accounts of communication have focused almost exclusively on honest, cooperative communication. However, much of human life involves deception and lies. Using the generally agreed upon definition of lying, we here develop an enactive account of the dynamics of lying. At face, lying poses a problem for enactive theories of cognition since lying seemingly requires the ability to represent counterfactual states of affairs and implant those representations in other agents' belief systems. On our account, lying involves the active manipulation of the short- and long-term dynamics of social cognitive systems so that agents have access to different sets of affordances from the one’s they counterfactually would have had access to without the lie. Representing truths and falsehoods are replaced with competency within social-cultural and material practices.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2117009
- PAR ID:
- 10404605
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Adaptive Behavior
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1059-7123
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 3-16
- Size(s):
- p. 3-16
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)We study evacuation dynamics in a major urban region (Mi- ami, FL) using a combination of a realistic population and social contact network, and an agent-based model of evacuation behavior that takes into account peer influence and concerns of looting. These factors have been shown to be important in prior work, and have been modeled as a threshold-based network dynamical systems model (2mode-threshold), which involves two threshold parameters - for a family's decision to evacuate and to remain in place for looting and crime concerns - based on the fraction of neighbors who have evacuated. The dynamics of such models are not well understood, and we observe that the threshold parameters have a signifi cant impact on the evacuation dynamics. We also observe counter-intuitive eff ects of increasing the evacuation threshold on the evacuated fraction in some regimes of the model parameter space, which suggests that the details of realistic networks matter in designing policies.more » « less
-
We study evacuation dynamics in a major urban region (Miami, FL) using a combination of a realistic population and social contact network, and an agent-based model of evacuation behavior that takes into account peer influence and concerns of looting. These factors have been shown to be important in prior work, and have been modeled as a threshold-based network dynamical systems model (2mode-threshold), which involves two threshold parameters|for a family's decision to evacuate and to remain in place for looting and crime concerns|based on the fraction of neighbors who have evacuated. The dynamics of such models are not well understood, and we observe that the threshold parameters have a significant impact on the evacuation dynamics. We also observe counter-intuitive effects of increasing the evacuation threshold on the evacuated fraction in some regimes of the model parameter space, which suggests that the details of realistic networks matter in designing policies.more » « less
-
Studies of personal informatics systems primarily examine people's use or non-use, but people often leverage other technology towards their long-term behavior change processes such as social platforms. We explore how tracking technologies and social platforms together help people build healthy eating behaviors by interviewing 18 people who use Chinese food journaling apps. We contribute a Model of Socially Sustained Self-Tracking in personal informatics, building on the past model of Personal Informatics and the learning components of Social Cognitive Theory. The model illustrates how people get advice from social platforms on when and how to track, transfer data to and apply knowledge from social platforms, evolve to use social platforms after tracking, and occasionally resume using tracking tools. Observational learning and enactive learning are central to these processes, with social technologies helping people to gain deeper and more reliable domain knowledge. We discuss how lapsing and abandoning of tracking can be viewed as evolving to social platforms, offering recommendations for how technology can better facilitate this evolution.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Virtual agents are systems that add a social dimension to computing, often featuring not only natural language input but also an embodiment or avatar. This allows them to take on a more social role and leverage the use of nonverbal communication (NVC). In humans, NVC is used for many purposes, including communicating intent, directing attention, and conveying emotion. As a result, researchers have developed agents that emulate these behaviors. However, challenges pervade the design and development of NVC in agents. Some articles reveal inconsistencies in the benefits of agent NVC; others show signs of difficulties in the process of analyzing and implementing behaviors. Thus, it is unclear what the specific outcomes and effects of incorporating NVC in agents and what outstanding challenges underlie development. This survey seeks to review the uses, outcomes, and development of NVC in virtual agents to identify challenges and themes to improve and motivate the design of future virtual agents.more » « less
