Page 54 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Chapter 4

DEVELOPING AGENTS WHO CAN
RELATE TO US

Putting Agents in Our Loop via Situated
Self-Creation

Bruce Edmonds
Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University

Abstract This paper addresses the problem of how to produce artificial agents so that they
can relate to us. To achieve this it is argued that the agent must have humans in
its developmental loop and not merely as designers. The suggestion is that an
agent needs to construct its self as humans do - by adopting at a fundamental
level others as its model for its self as well as vice versa. The beginnings of an
architecture to achieve this is sketched. Some of the consequences of adopting
such an approach to producing agents is discussed.

1. Introduction
In this paper I do not directly consider the question of how to make artificial
agents so that humans can relate to them, but more the reverse: how to produce
artificial agents so that they can relate to us. However, this is directly relevant
to human-computer interaction since we, as humans, are used to dealing with
entities who can relate to us - in other words, human relationships are recip-
rocal. The appearance of an ability in agents could allow a shift away from
merely using them as tools towards forming relationships with them.
The basic idea is to put the human into the developmental loop of the agent
so that the agent co-develops an identity that is intimately bound up with ours.
This will give it a sound basis with which to base its dealings with us, en-
abling its perspective to be in harmony with our own in a way that would be
impossible if one attempted to design such an empathetic sociality into it. The
development of such an agent could be achieved by mimicking early human