How to Describe Human Social Interactions with Artificial Agents

So-called "social robots" are artificial embodied agents that are designed to dispose us to engage with them using the routines, norms, and capacities that we employ in social interactions with humans. But precisely what is going on in such interactions?  The young  multidiscipline of HRI (Human Robot Interaction research) is still grappling with this task, partly due to a strong emphasis on quantitative behavioral research.

In this talk I present the descriptive framework OASIS (Ontology of Social Asymmetric Interactions), which offers new conceptual tools for mixed method research in HRI.  A key element of OASIS is the new theoretical construct of "sociomorphing," the ascription of coordination capacities, which correlates with different types of sociality experience.  I discuss the role of OASIS for robot design and human education (increase of technological literacy) to mitigate familiar ethical problems arising with social robots.

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