Embodied Agents and Social Computing

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Embodied Agents andSocial Computing

• Tim Bickmore
• Affective Computing Group
• MIT Media Laboratory

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Overview

• Intellectual Framework
• Embodied Conversational Agents
• Etiquette
• Relational Agents

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Intellectual Framework

• Study human face-to-face conversation
• Not just as inspiration, but as model
• The best (only?) examples we have to draw from.
• Human social cognition is built to work this way.
• Relevant Disciplines
• Linguistics/Discourse/Sociolinguistics
• Sociology/Ethnomethodology
• Social Psychology
• Discourse-inspired models of collaboration

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Research Methodology

• Study human-human interaction
• Build computational models
• Evaluate models

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Empirical StudiesPosture Shifts
Posture shifts with respect to discourse segment
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Empirical StudiesHandheld ECAs
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Embodied Conversational Agents
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What does this have to do with Etiquette?

• Etiquette is about upholding a tacit social
  contract in interaction
• Following the rules governing face-to-face
  interaction is an important part of this contract
• Gricean cooperativeness
• Goffmans face
• Turn-taking, etc.
• But, these are relatively static with respect to
  roles and relationships.

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Etiquette

• How do people negotiate changing roles?
• How do people negotiate changing relationships?
• How can our computers do these things?

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Relational Agents

• Computational artifacts designed to build and
  maintain long-term, social-emotional
  relationships with their users.

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Motivating Example
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Motivation

• How do people benefit from social relationships?
• Direct benefits
• Instrumental, emotional, social support
• Indirect benefits
• Persuasion (e.g., sales)
• Education (e.g., peer collaboration)
• Health Well-being
• Helping (e.g., psychotherapy, behavior change)

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Small Talk and Trust

• Real Estate Sales Agent ECA
• Modeled initial buyer/agent interview
• Hypothesis
• Small talk leads to increased trust in agent

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Working Alliance andBehavior Change

• Working alliance
• A type of relationship
• Measurable
• Known mediating variable between relational
  activities and outcomes across a wide range of
  psychotherapeutic disciplines
• Subscales
• Bond, Task, Goal

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Application

• Exercise Behavior Change
• Relatively simple, brief duration
• Several proven techniques exist that could be
  delivered by a software agent
• Relevant to college subject population
• Objectively measurable, real application
• New guidelines are for daily exercise gives
  subjects opportunity for daily interactions

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Exercise Advisor
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Relational Manipulations

• Kitchen Sink approach
• Small talk
• Empathy exchanges (following Klein)
• Talk about the relationship
• Humor
• Politeness Forms of Address
• Reciprocal self-disclosure
• Continuity behaviors
• Talking about past and future (requires memory)
• Nonverbal immediacy behaviors

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Nonverbal Behavior

• Pre-compiled through BEAT

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Experiment

• Treatments CONTROL / NON-RELATIONAL /
  RELATIONAL
• One-month intervention one-month followup
• 100 Subjects

30 days
30 days
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More Info
http//www.media.mit.edu/bickmore