Abstract:

The aging Baby Boomer Generation and the reduced number of extended family units cohabiting under the same roof point toward greater reliance on AI systems to provide services to aid the elderly at home. While technological advances have increased the agility, power, and safety features of AIs that interact with humans, there remains a reluctance to engage with AI in everyday physically-embodied praxis in circumstances that require trust and human connection. The importance of the development of trust and trustworthiness have been established as critical in the development of ethical science [1][2] and in creating an atmosphere within the classroom that is conducive for students and teachers to create an effective learning environment especially when engaging in difficult conversation [3]. The element of surprise results from the sudden subversion of an expectation [4] and its presence can serve as a measure of trust. The proposed work explores human-AI interaction through robotic technologies in embodied movement. Within a series of interrogative exercises between a movement performer and at least two robots we explore the basic question: Can a robot generate a sense of “fun” defined here as “pleasure with surprises”? “Surprise” in this sense will be explored in multiple ways: through the use of aleatory choreographic devices; through the surprise of emergent behaviors arising from interactions between performers; and through the novel outputs of generative AI systems.

This project explores the concept of “pleasure with surprises” and how it could be generated through interactive human-robot play. On the premise that the element of surprise is possible in part by the establishment of assumptions based on trust, this work extends the concept of surprise exploration through human-robot performance by integrating and re-purposing established game theory strategies intended to study cooperative behaviors to avoid being exploited or “cheated” upon [5]. The paper introduces the concept of acquiring trust and its subversion to explore emergent surprise behaviors through the interaction between human, robot, and participant observers. In the era of rapid development of AI technologies accelerating changes in a variety of fields including education, the proposed project sheds light on how the collaborative interaction between human and robot/AI could be successfully established through acquired trust, while enhancing learning, which may be gauged by the element of surprise.

References:
[1] Reardon,J.,Lee,S.S,Goering,S.,Fullerton,S.M.,Cho,M.K.,Panofsky, A., and Hammonds, E.M., (2023) “Trustworthiness matters: Building equitable and ethical science,” Cell 186, March 2, 2023 a 2023 Elsevier Inc.
[2] Kennedy, B., Tyson, A., and Funk, C. (2022). “Americans’ trust in scientists, other groups declines.” Pew Research Trust. 15 February. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/ 02/15/americans-trust-in- scientists-other- groups-declines/.
[3] Gerardo, H., de Callafon, R., and Boechler, N. (2023). “Implementing a Praxis of Change: A Comparative Case Study on the Instruction of Engineering Ethics and the Development of Trust.” In Frontiers in Education, 2023, Texas A&M, College Station, Texas (forthcoming.)
[4] Smuts, A. (2009) “The Paradox of Suspense.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 6 July. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-suspense/
[5] Gintis, H. (2000) Game Theory Evolving. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press. pp 27-87.

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence, Game Theory, Trust, Surprise, Human/Robot Interaction.