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Part of
Risk Discourse and Responsibility
Edited by Annelie Ädel and Jan-Ola Östman
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 336] 2023
► pp. 172–189

Chapter 7
Risk and responsibility in human-robot interaction

An interactional approach

ORCID logo | University of Southern Denmark Denmark
In this chapter, I argue that interaction researchers have a large toolbox available to analyze the quality of current human-robot interactions, allowing us to identify possible risks concerning the introduction of social robots into our societies. I illustrate how interactional analyses can serve to evaluate the quality of human-robot interactions on sample studies of an interview interaction with Sophia the Robot and tutoring interactions of the iCub robot with a focus on how the interaction partners take each other into account. The results indicate potential risks even in seemingly enjoyable and tightly coordinated human-robot interactions, which suggests that interaction researchers may want to take responsibility for contributing to the risk assessment of introducing social robots into our social spaces.
Keywords: robotics, human–machine interaction, interaction quality, recipient design, risk assessment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The problem addressed
  • 3.Approach
  • 4.Sample analysis: Recipient design
    • 4.1Example 1: An interview with Sophia the Robot
    • 4.2Example 2: Responsive tutoring interactions with the iCub
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.336.07fis
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