Close Engagements with Artificial Companions

Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues

Editor

Yorick Wilks | University of Oxford

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027249944 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027288400 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

What will it be like to admit Artificial Companions into our society? How will they change our relations with each other? How important will they be in the emotional and practical lives of their owners – since we know that people became emotionally dependent even on simple devices like the Tamagotchi? How much social life might they have in contacting each other? The contributors to this book discuss the possibility and desirability of some form of long-term computer Companions now being a certainty in the coming years. It is a good moment to consider, from a set of wide interdisciplinary perspectives, both how we shall construct them technically as well as their personal philosophical and social consequences. By Companions we mean conversationalists or confidants – not robots – but rather computer software agents whose function will be to get to know their owners over a long period. Those may well be elderly or lonely, and the contributions in the book focus not only on assistance via the internet (contacts, travel, doctors etc.) but also on providing company and Companionship, by offering aspects of real personalization.

[Natural Language Processing, 8] 2010. xxii, 315 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/nlp.8

Table of Contents

Foreword | pp. xi–xii

Acknowledgements | p. xii

Contributors | pp. xiii–xxii

Section I. Setting the scene

In good company? On the threshold of robotic Companions

Sherry Turkle | pp. 3–10

Introducing artificial Companions

Yorick Wilks | pp. 11–20

Section II. Ethical and philosophical issues

Artificial Companions and their philosophical challenges

Luciano Floridi | pp. 23–28

Conditions for Companionhood

Stephen G. Pulman | pp. 29–34

Arius in cyberspace: Digital Companions and the limits of the person

Kieron O'Hara | pp. 35–56

Section III. Social and psychological issues: What should a Companion be like?

Conversationalists and confidants

Margaret A. Boden | pp. 59–61

Robots should be slaves

Joanna J. Bryson | pp. 63–74

Wanting the impossible: The dilemma at the heart of intimate human-robot relationships

Dylan Evans | pp. 75–88

Falling in love with a Companion

David Levy | pp. 89–94

Identifying your accompanist

Will Lowe | pp. 95–100

Look, emotion, language and behavior in a believable virtual Companion

Daniela M. Romano | pp. 101–106

New Companions

Alex Taylor, Anab Jain and Laurel Swan | pp. 107–120

On being a Victorian Companion

Yorick Wilks | pp. 121–128

Section IV. Design issues: Building a Companion

The use of affective and attentive cues in an empathic computer-based Companions

Nikolaus Bee, Elisabeth Andre, Thurid Vogt and Patrick Gebhard | pp. 131–142

GRETA: Towards an interactive conversational virtual Companion

Elisabetta Bevacqua, Ken Prepin, Radoslaw Niewiadomski, Etienne de Sevin and Catherine Pelachaud | pp. 143–156

A world-hybrid approach to a conversational Companion for reminiscing about images

Roberta Catizone, Simon F. Worgan, Yorick Wilks, Alexiei Dingli and Weiwei Cheng | pp. 157–168

Companionship is an emotional business

Roddy Cowie | pp. 169–172

Artificial Companions in society: Consulting the users

Alan Newell | pp. 173–178

Requirements for Artificial Companions: It’s harder than you think

Aaron Sloman | pp. 179–200

You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you

Alan FT Winfield | pp. 201–208

Section V. Special purpose Companions

A Companion for learning in everyday life

Rebecca Eynon and Chris Davies | pp. 211–220

The Maryland virtual patient as a task-oriented conversational Companion

Sergei Nirenburg | pp. 221–244

Living with robots: Ethical tradeoffs in eldercare

Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey | pp. 245–256

Section VI. Afterword

Summary and discussion of the issues

Malcom Peltu and Yorick Wilks | pp. 259–286

Index | pp. 309–316

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