[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Special Issue of Interacting with Computers: Abuse and Misuse of Social Agents (3/20/07; journal issue)

[Gonul Pultar]

CALL FOR PAPERS

ABUSE AND MISUSE OF SOCIAL AGENTS
Special Issue of Interacting with Computers

For decades, science fiction writers have envisioned a world in which 
robots and computers act like human assistants, virtual companions, and 
artificial helpmates. Nowadays, for better or for worse, that vision is 
becoming reality. A number of human-like interfaces and machines are 
under development in research centers around the world, and several 
prototypes have already been deployed on the Internet and in businesses. 
Even in our homes, service robots, such as vacuum cleaners and lawn 
movers, are becoming increasingly common. These creatures are the 
first-generation social agents: machines designed to build relationships 
with users while performing tasks with some degree of autonomy. Social 
agents display a range of human-like behaviors: they communicate using 
natural language, gesture, display and recognize emotions, and are even 
designed to mirror our facial expressions and show empathy.

Until recently, scientific investigations into the psychological aspects 
of human relationships with social agents have mainly addressed the 
positive effects of this relationship, such as an increase in trust and 
task facilitation (e.g., Bickmore & Picard, 2005). Nevertheless, as the 
interaction bandwidth evolves to encompass a broader range of social and 
emotional expressiveness, there is the possibility of the user and 
social agent displaying anti-social, hostile, and disinhibited 
behaviors. Workshops held at Interact2005 and CHI2006 (De Angeli, 
Brahnam, & Wallis, 2005; De Angeli, Brahnam, Wallis, & Dix, 2006) have 
suggested that anthropomorphic metaphors can inadvertently rouse the 
user to display dissatisfaction through angry interactions, sexual 
harassment, and volleys of verbal abuse.

At first glance, verbally or even physically abusing social agents and 
service robots may not appear to pose much of a problem nothing that 
could be accurately labelled abuse since computers and machines are not 
people and thus not capable of being harmed. Nevertheless, the fact that 
abuse, or the threat of it, is part of the interaction opens important 
moral, ethical, and design issues. As machines begin to look and behave 
more like people, it is important to ask how they should behave when 
threatened and verbally and physically attacked. Another concern is the 
potential that socially intelligent agents have of taking advantage of 
users, especially children, who are prone to attribute to these 
characters more warmth and human qualities then they actually posses. 
Many parents, for instance, are disturbed by the amount of information 
social agents are able to obtain in their interactions with children. It 
is feared that these relationship-building agents could be used as pote!
  nt means of marketing and advertising.

For this special issue of Interacting with Computers, we are soliciting 
papers from a range of disciplines (psychology, HCI, robotics, and 
cultural studies) that address the negative side of human-computer 
interaction. Papers on all aspects of the topic are welcome, but we are 
particularly interested in papers that address the following questions:
* How does the misuse and abuse of social agents affect the user's 
computing experience?
* How does disinhibition with social agents differ from Internet 
disinhibition?
* What are the psychological, sociological, and technological factors 
involved in negative interactions between users and social agents?
* What design factors (e.g., embodiment, communication styles, 
functionality) trigger or restrain disinhibited behaviours?
* What are the social and psychological consequences of negative 
human-computer interactions?
* How can we develop machines that learn to avoid user abuses?
* How can agent technology be exploited to take advantage of users and 
what ethical and design mechanisms can counteract this possibility?
* Is it appropriate for machines to ignore aggression? If conversational 
agents do not acknowledge verbal abuse will this only serve to aggravate 
the situation?
* If potential clients are abusing virtual business representatives, 
then to what extent are they abusing the businesses or the social groups 
the human-like interfaces represent?

** Guest Editors:
Antonella De Angeli (University of Manchester), UK
Sheryl Brahnam (Missouri State University), US

** Submissions:
Contributions should not exceed 10,000 words and should follow the IwC 
Guideliness for Authors available at
http://authors.elsevier.com/JournalDetail.html?PubID=525445&Precis= and
Authors intending to submit a paper should send an Abstract to
Sheryl Brahnam: sbrahnam (*) facescience (*) org (replace * with 
appropriate email symbols).

All papers submitted will be double blind, peer reviewed.

** Important Dates:
March 20th: Abstract Submission
April 5, 2007: Paper Submission
May 25: Notification of acceptance
June 15: Camera ready
Contact:
Sheryl Brahnam sbrahnam: (*) facescience (*) org (replace * with 
appropriate email symbols).



          ==========================================================
               From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List