The Return of the Uncanny Valley: we know a lot about bots, but what do we know about their users?

Bots become ubiquitous, but we still haven’t really figured out how the ned users really feel about them.

Long time ago (about 45 years), in a galaxy not far away (Japan), Masahiro Mori discovered the so-called Uncanny Valley effect that he described very dilligently in a pioneering article on human-computer relation from psychological perspective (recent English translation here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/the-uncanny-valley).

Mori observed a heightened sensitivity to defects in near-humanlike forms — an uncanny valley in what is otherwise a positive relationship between human likeness and familiarity. While the reasons for the effect Mori observed are still unknown, there has been a lot of speculation about how it is related to our intrinsic fear of death. A humanoid robot that moves and speaks almost like a human resembles something that is dead and alive simultaneously.

In various further studies the concept was explored, mainly referring to physical robots and how users perceived them. For instance in a fairly recent study (Saygin et al. 2012) participants watched body movements of a human (biological appearance and movement), a robot (mechanical appearance and movement) or an android (biological appearance, mechanical movement). With the exception of extrastriate body area, which showed more suppression for human like appearance, the APS was not selective for appearance or motion per se. Instead, distinctive responses were found to the mismatch between appearance and motion: whereas suppression effects for the human and robot were similar to each other, they were stronger for the android, notably in bilateral anterior intraparietal sulcus. Other similar studies have indicated that bth very realistic human-looking robots or computer avatars tend to elicit negative feelings in human observers.

We already know that many kinds of media (e.g., computers, robots, films) are capable of eliciting, to varying degrees, different kinds of social responses, gestural, gaze, etc. Nevertheless, qualitative and quantitative differences emerge depending on the type of media and how it acts. The eerie feeling elicited by human-looking but not mechanical looking robots is one such qualitative difference, and its significance is worth exploring.

The current research of our team is devoted to social interaction of chatbots that are employees / members of the organizations that implement them. Research will be carried out in the context of the ongoing process of introducing artificial intelligence in the area of social interaction with people, with particular emphasis on the interactions in the professional sphere, and in business.

The groups of participants are asked to talk with the chatbot/human about a specific topic, and later they can engage in a free chat on any subject. Afterwards, the tested groups are asked to assess their interlocutor and fill in a questionnaire to investigate human-chatbot interactions, and we check how many pieces of information were successfully conveyed and what was the quality of the communication. During the experiment, the electrophysiological data is collected from eyebrow wrinkling muscles (musculus corrugator supercilii) and zygomatic muscles (musculus zygomaticus), in accordance with standard guidelines. Additionally, we gather information from ECG, respirometer, and electrodermal activity in order to supplement the qualitative data with affective quantitative data

Main hypothesis: we can talk about traces of social intelligence in chatbots. Our work will fill a gap in the HCI research (Human-Computer Interaction) where only little attention so far has been paid to the socio-cognitive nature of the professional interaction between man and technology in general, and chatbots in particular. The research will be original and will definitely have an exploratory character. Certainly, the work will provide knowledge that will contribute to the development of both the economy and the society (deeper knowledge of HCI).

This, however, is still insufficient. The effect will most probably play a very important role in perceiving bots as representatives of various companies and institutions responsible for communicating with end users more and more frequently. And this is the other side of attention economy that is not really covered by many academic researchers and particularly byR&D teams at startups and companies. Moving forward without the user is not moving forward at all.