Page 257 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

240 Socially Intelligent Agents

Figure 29.2. Talk Nice flowchart

understand the content of what the user says. The video directs the exchange
with relentless cheeriness, setting an agenda of extroverted chat. The girls seem
to lead participants into the situation by means of a reward promised at the end
(the Party), but really they are persuading through the old teenager technique
of setting themselves up as the in-group, taunting everyone else to try and get
in, and threatening humiliation for failure. Issues of selfhood do hold sway
here, even if there is no intelligent agent that overtly acquires and displays a
sense of self. There are questions suggested about where selfhood resides in the
interactive situation, and about the impact of the work on both the artificial and