From automata to animate beings: the scope and limits of attributing socialness to artificial agents

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Ruud Hortensius, Emily S Cross

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms and consequences of attributing socialness to artificial agents has important implications for how we can use technology to lead more productive and fulfilling lives. Here, we integrate recent findings on the factors that shape behavioral and brain mechanisms that support social interactions between humans and artificial agents. We review how visual features of an agent, as well as knowledge factors within the human observer, shape attributions across dimensions of socialness. We explore how anthropomorphism and dehumanization further influence how we perceive and interact with artificial agents. Based on these findings, we argue that the cognitive reconstruction within the human observer is likely to be far more crucial in shaping our interactions with artificial agents than previously thought, while the artificial agent's visual features are possibly of lesser importance. We combine these findings to provide an integrative theoretical account based on the "like me" hypothesis, and discuss the key role played by the Theory-of-Mind network, especially the temporal parietal junction, in the shift from mechanistic to social attributions. We conclude by highlighting outstanding questions on the impact ...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 12, 2019·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Emily S CrossRuud Hortensius
Mar 12, 2019·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Emily S CrossAgnieszka Wykowska
Mar 12, 2019·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Joshua SkewesJohanna Seibt
Feb 8, 2019·Frontiers in Psychology·Benjamin Balas, Amanda Auen
Jan 2, 2021·Trends in Cognitive Sciences·Emily S Cross, Richard Ramsey
May 5, 2020·Trends in Neurosciences·Anna HenschelEmily S Cross
Mar 16, 2021·Frontiers in Robotics and AI·Katie A Riddoch, Emily S Cross
Aug 26, 2021·Journal of Cognition·Dorina de JongEmily S Cross
Apr 1, 2020··Te-Yi HsiehBishakha Chaudhury

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