HCC: Medium: Social and Moral Relationships With Personified Robots

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。这个项目将调查人们与拟人化机器人的社会和道德关系。这些机器人以不同的方式和程度体现了人类的各个方面，只要它们有一个角色，具有适应性和自主性，可以说话、学习、使用自然线索和自我组织。本项目将完成五项补充调查：(1)研究成年人是否认为人形机器人有感情、智能、可以成为朋友、自主、有道德地位（即可以成为不公平行为和无端心理伤害的接受者）。关于儿童、青少年和成人在多大程度上相信机器人应该对它对人类造成的伤害负责的研究。(3)一项关于道德地位和责任的研究，研究儿童、青少年和成年人是否认为人形机器人最像人类、儿童、动物或物体，或者是一种新的技术类型。(4)研究儿童、青少年和成人是否认为机器人是一个可以产生信任的实体，并且可以被信任。(5)对人类与机器人互动中社会性模式的设计研究，以表征人类与机器人之间社会互动的基本特征。总的来说，这一工作将首次提供一个系统的社会和道德行为和推理的人形机器人，跨越童年，青春期和成年期。在基础科学方面，这个项目将测试一个假设，即人们不是简单地“好像”拟人化机器人具有社交性（就像戏剧中的“角色”），而是真诚地、有意义地将拟人化机器人视为社交他人，在某些方面甚至是道德他人。与此同时，这个项目将确定人机交互的程度，这不仅仅是将人类互动（或人类与动物的互动）映射到机器人上，而是代表了一种新的类型：技术上的，但有生命的，拟人化的，反应灵敏的，似乎是自主的。随着拟人化机器人越来越普遍并融入人们的日常社会生活，它们将给儿童和成人带来重大的社会和道德挑战。具体的挑战将取决于机器人是如何设计的，它们的使用环境，以及人们如何与这些机器人实际互动。未来，机器人可能会成为老年人的护理助理、儿童的学术导师、医疗助理、日托助理或心理咨询师。因此，重要的是要从一开始就了解不同年龄组对机器人的反应，并将它们日益复杂的行为概念化。在不久的将来，公众很可能会对将拟人化机器人引入社会表示严重关切。例如，人们可能会担心，与拟人化的机器人互动将使主仆关系具体化（机器人作为仆人），或者破坏真实社会关系的真实性。尤其是父母，他们可能会对拟人化机器人对孩子的影响表示担忧。这项前瞻性的研究和设计项目的结果将为最恰当地回应这些担忧提供指导，并将建立确保机器人只用于人类利益的原则。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5). This project will investigate people's social and moral relationships with personified robots. These robots, in various ways and to varying degrees, embody aspects of people insofar as they have a persona, are adaptive and autonomous, and can talk, learn, use natural cues, and self organize. This project will complete five complementary investigations: (1) Research on whether adults believe that a humanoid robot has feelings, is intelligent, can be a friend, is autonomous, and has moral standing (i.e., can be the recipient of unfair actions and unwarranted psychological harm). (2) A study of the extent to which children, adolescents, and adults believe that a robot can be responsible for harm it causes humans. (3) A study of moral standing and accountability that examines whether children, adolescents, and adults consider a humanoid robot most like a human, child, animal, or object - or as a new technological genre. (4) Research on whether children, adolescents, and adults believe that a robot is an entity that engenders trust and can be trusted. (5) A design study of patterns for sociality in human-robot interaction that characterizes essential features of social interaction between humans and robots. Taken together, this body of work would provide for the first time a systematic account of social and moral behavior and reasoning with a humanoid robot that cuts across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. In terms of basic science, this project will test the hypothesis that people do not simply act "as if " personified robots are social (like "characters" in a play), but engage personified robots sincerely and meaningfully as social others, and in some ways even as moral others. At the same time, this project would determine the extent to which human-robot interaction is not simply the mapping of human-human interactions (or human-animal interactions) onto robots, but represents a new genre: technological yet animate, personified, responsive, and seemingly autonomous.As personified robots become more prevalent and integrated into people's everyday social lives, they will pose children and adults with significant challenges, socially and morally. The specific challenges will depend on how the robots are designed, their context of use, and on how people actually interact with such robots. In future, robots may become caretaking assistants for the elderly, academic tutors for children, or medical assistants, day care assistants, or psychological counselors. Thus, it is important to understand at the outset how different age groups respond to robots and conceptualize their increasingly complex behavior. It is likely in the near future that the public will raise serious concerns about the introduction of personified robots into society. Concerns may be voiced, for example, that interacting with personified robots will reify a master-servant relationship (with the robot as servant), or undermine authenticity of real social relationships. Parents, in particular, may voice concerns about the impacts of personified robots on their children. The results of this proactive research and design project will provide guidance in responding most appropriately to such concerns and will establish principles for assuring that robots will be used only for human benefit.