Page 255 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

238 Socially Intelligent Agents

rience of them ultimately diverges as much as the two notions of embodiment
in them differ. Experiencing simulated self-recognition in an IA is likely to not
reinforce the sense of self in the human interactor at all, but rather counter it
and provoke a relinquishing of selfhood in parallel with the process of recog-
nizing an artificial self. This is because the simulation itself, the technological
construction of the IA, situates it within the "ethos" of technology that imposes
a possibly dehumanizing but always rationally utilitarian value onto its artifacts
[4, pp. 38,50]. Which is to say that ordinary people, more or less unwittingly,
experience autonomous artifacts through a disposition of what they wish tech-
nology to do for them. They unconsciously attribute to the artifact, as to all
technological apparati, the power to satisfy their desires.
An IA will thus have a radically different impact than traditional kinds of art,
although it may come closer to paralleling more recent experimental art that pur-
sues re-embodiment by engaging senses other than the visual. Vancouver-based
artist Elizabeth Van der Zaag’s interactive work Talk Nice could be approached
and analyzed as the latter, since the viewer is required to sit in a chair and talk
through a microphone to a video projection, which then responds to the input.
One could argue that the viewer is more physically aware of their own pres-
ence in the work because of these features. But Talk Nice is more accurately
described as an artwork that behaves like an IA. From an IA research point
of view, Van der Zaag’s speaking/listening system is itself an embodied agent
through its ability to interact with humans, so as to calculate and then commu-
nicate an assessment of human performance. Once the viewer has crossed the
threshold of reluctance (in my case) to speak aloud to a virtual other in a public
space, the contest for mastery of the situation – human or machine – begins.
Talk Nice uses SAY (Speak and Yell) software, created by the artist herself,
which detects loudness and the pitch at the end of a sentence in the participant’s
voice. The chair and microphone for participant input are located about ten feet
from a video projection that shows two young women seated at a table, plus
a floating red ball and a blue bar to the right of this scenario that reflects the
pitch change in the participant’s voice (Fig. 1), and a red line along the bottom
that shows the amplitude or loudness of the voice. Sitting in the chair turns on
the microphone, whereupon the girls remark that someone is there and prompt
the participant to speak. Their first response, which launches the "coaching
sessions," is that the loudness of your voice is okay or not right. But the change
in pitch at the very last second of your sentence is what counts, and so the
coaching videos continue with help in learning how to speak with an "upism."
The interaction is set up as a game: the Talk Nice flow chart (Fig. 2) tracks the
pathways through learning and subsequent moves into the chat of the Bubble
Tea Room and the goal of going to the cool Party.