Anthropomorphism & Social Robots

People show empathy not only to humans and animals but also to machines

A study showed that most people refuse to “harm” or “torture” machines or robots

LaMDA is a Chatbot developed by Google which is trained to act sentient

It lead to a huge controversy if machines are already sentient and therefore was an important factor regarding humans empathizing with machines

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities

Additional info:

Human tendency of pereiving all beings as human like

The Heidel & Simmel study shows that humans tend to see human-like motivations, intentions and emotions in completely unhuman-like things –> geometrical shapes

Humans anthropomorphise non-human entities

The Pixar lamp of the Pixar intro is a famous examle for that phenomenon, since it is mostly associated with emotions or character traits like happiness, innocence or clumsiness

Elicited agent knowledge –> Knowledge about people must be accessible (usually easily retrievable) and activated by the agent

Effectance motivation –> Persons must have a motivation to interact effectively with the agent or to explain present stimuli and predict future behavior

Sociality motivation –> Persons must have a need for social relation and belonging

Moral care and concern –> First, perceiving an agent to have a mind means that agent is capable of conscious experience and should therefore be treated as a moral agent worthy of care and concern

Responsibility –> Second, perceiving an agent to have a mind means that the agent is capable of intentional action and can therefore be held responsible for its actions

Social influence –> Third, perceiving an agent to have a mind means that the agent is capable of observing, evaluating, and judging a perceiver, thereby serving as a source of normative social influence on the perceiver

Often social robots are designed in a cute manner, since they are most often used in education, care or in restaurants

Cute robots are often perceived as less dangerous and more likable and increase the trust and the quality of the interaction between humans and machines

Robots can be designed in a cute way with the Kindchenschema or Baby scheme or non-verbal cues

large head

big eyes

round shapes

small size

clumsy movement

high-pitched voice

lateral head tilt

Since cute robots tend to be more likable in a human perspective, these machines could also be theorectiaclly used to manipulate humans

Research showed that such cute robots could extract relatively easy critical and relevant information about humans in a short conversation

This again could be abused, e.g. with social engineering

Social engineering means influencing/manipulating people so they give up confidential information or sensitive data (e.g. passwords, banking information)

Invaders use pychological strategies, try to confuse victims, involve them in small talk and exploit our natural inclination to trust others

Robots could use trained interpersonal or social skills to manipulate an individual and get access to crucial data

This would work more efficient with cute, not completely human-like robots, since they are perceived as friedly, harmless and trustworthy