Page 43 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

26 Socially Intelligent Agents

from the user’s perspective simulating the neuron level of intelligence is simply
not relevant. In the same spirit, researchers in sociology may explain people’s
intelligent behaviour in terms of economical, social and ideological structures,
but since these theories are not (yet) folk-theories in our sense of the term, they
may not contribute very much to user-centred SIA research. Again, since the
focus lies on folk-theories, some scholarly and scientific theories will not be
very useful. In this sense, constructivist SIA research adopts a sort of ’black-
box’ design approach, allowing tricks and shortcuts as long as they create a
meaningful and coherent experience of social intelligence in the user.
This does not mean that the constructivist approach is only centred on sur-
face phenomena, or that apparent intelligence is easy to accomplish. On the
contrary, creating an apparently intelligent creature, which meets the user’s
folk-theoretical expectations and still manages to be deeply interactive, seems
to involve high and yet unresolved complexity. It is precisely the interactive
aspect of intelligence that makes it such a difficult task. When designing in-
telligent characters in cinema, for instance, the filmmakers can determine the
situation in which a given behaviour occurs (and thus make it more meaningful)
because of the non-interactive nature of the medium. In SIA applications, the
designer must foresee an almost infinitive number of interactions from the user,
all of which must generate a meaningful and understandable response form the
system’s part. Thus, interactivity is the real ’litmus test’ for socially intelligent
agent technology.
Designing SIA in the user centred way proposed here is to design social
intelligence, rather than just intelligence. Making oneself appear intelligible to
one’s context is an inherently social task requiring one to follow the implicit
and tacit folk-theories regulating the everyday social world.
References

[1] An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior. F. Heider and M. Simmel. American
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[2] Andrew Whiten. Natural Theories of Mind. Evolution, Development and Simulation of
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[3] Aronson. The Social Animal, Fifth Edition. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1988.
[4] B. L. Omdahl. Cognitive Appraisal, Emotion, and Empathy. Lawrence Erlbaum Asso-
ciates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1995.
[5] B. Reeves and C. Nass. The Media Equation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
England, 1996.
[6] C. Pelachaud and N. I. Badler and M.Steedman. Generating Facial Expression for Speech.
Cognitive Science, 20:1–46, 1996.
[7] Chris Kleinke. Gaze and Eye Contact: A Research Review. Psychological Bulletin,
100:78–100, 1986.
[8] D.C.Dennett. The intentional stance. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987.