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22 Socially Intelligent Agents

contrast, the authors of this chapter propose a multi-facetted view of how users
employ an intentional stance in understanding socially intelligent agents.
In order to understand how and why users attribute agents with intelligence
in general and social intelligence in particular, to we turn to a constructivist
explanation model. The ontological claims underlying this approach focus
mainly on the active role of the human mind in constructing a meaningful
reality [25]. ’Social intelligence’ is not some transcendental faculty, but an
understanding arising in the interaction between a set of cues and an active
and cognitively creative observer. Thanks to the constructively active user, the
cues needed to prompt anthropomorphic attributions can be quite simple on the
surface [1] [5, p. 7] [27, p. 173].
Since science knows little about how ’real’ intelligence, intentionality or
agency work - or even if there are such things outside of human experience
- we cannot create intelligence independently of an observer/user. In order
to achieve appearance of intelligence it is crucial to design SIA systems with
careful consideration to how such systems will be received, understood and
interpreted by users. The function of SIA technology becomes the centre of
attention, whether this is learning [30], therapy [19], game/play experiences
[22] [15], the SIMS or the spectacular appearance of a Sony Aibo robotic dog.
According to a constructivist approach to SIA, there is little use in creating
artificial intelligence unless it is meaningful consistent [20] and coherent to a
given user.
An opposing view of social intelligence research takes an objectivist stand-
point. According to this view - rooted in strong AI - social intelligence is
something that can be modelled and instantiated in any type of hardware, soft-
ware or wetware, but transcendentally exists outside any such instantiation. The
aim is to create SIA that are socially intelligent in the same sense as humans are
and thus the models created are based on theories of how actual human social
intelligence manifests itself.
Depending on the view taken the purpose of SIA research differs. While
constructivistsaimtostudyhowusersunderstand, frameandinterpretintelligent
systems in different situations, and use this knowledge to improve or enhance
the interaction, objectivists aim to study emergent behaviour of systems and
find better models and hypotheses about how human intelligence works.
The purpose of this chapter is to develop a conceptual framework, describing
how understandings/impressions of social intelligence arise in users. Once this
is in place, we will be able to develop a method for investigating and developing
socially intelligent agents.