Page 13 - Designing Sociable Robots

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xii Preface

and enjoyable manner is important and valuable. We are entering a time when socially savvy
robots could achieve commercial success, potentially transforming society.
But will people interact socially with these robots? Indeed, this appears to be the case.
In the field of human computer interaction (HCI), experiments have revealed that people
unconsciously treat socially interactive technologies like people, demonstrating politeness,
showing concern for their “feelings,” etc. To understand why, consider the profound impact
that overcoming social challenges has had on the evolution of the human brain. In essence,
we have evolved to be experts in social interaction. Our brains have changed very little from
that of our long-past ancestors, yet we must deal with modern technology. As a result, if a
technology behaves in a socially competent manner, we evoke our evolved social machinery
to interact with it. Humanoid robots are a particularly intriguing technology for interacting
with people, given the robots’ ability to support familiar social cues.
Hence, it makes practical sense to design robots that interact with us in a familiar way.
Humanizing the interface and our relationship with robots, however, depends on our con-
ceptions of human nature and what constitutes human-style social interaction. Accordingly,
we must consider the specific ways we understand and interact with the social world. If
done well, these robots will support our social characteristics, and our interactions with
them will be natural and intuitive. Thus, in an effort to make sociable robots familiar to
people, they will have to be socially intelligent in a human-like way.
There are a myriad of reasons—scientific, philosophical, as well as practical—for why
social intelligence is important for robots that interact with people. Social factors profoundly
shaped our evolution as a species. They play a critical role in our cognitive development,
how we learn from others, how we communicate and interact, our culture, and our daily lives
as members of society. For robots to be a part of our daily lives, they must be responsive to
us and be able to adapt in a manner that is natural and intuitive for us, not vice versa. In this
way, building sociable robots is also a means for understanding human social intelligence
as well—by providing testbeds for theories and models that underlie our social abilities,
through building engaging and intelligent robots that assist in our daily lives as well as
learn from us and teach us, and by challenging us to reflect upon the nature of humanity and
society. Robots should not supplant our need to interact with each other, but rather should
support us in our quest to better understand ourselves so that we might appreciate, enhance,
and celebrate our humanity and our social lives.
As the sociality of these robots begins to rival our own, will we accept them into the human
community? How will we treat them as they grow to understand us, relate to us, empathize
with us, befriend us, and share our lives? Science fiction has long challenged us to ponder
these questions. Vintage science fiction often portrays robots as sophisticated appliances
that people command to do their bidding. Star Wars, however, endows mechanical droids
with human characteristics. They have interesting personalities. They fear personal harm