Engagement vs. Deceit: Virtual Humans with Human Autobiographies

Abstract

Abstract. We discuss the ethical and practical issues involved in developing virtual humans that relate personal, fictitious, human autobiographical stories ("back stories") to their users. We describe a virtual human exercise counselor that interacts with users daily to promote exercise, and the integration of a dynamic social storytelling engine used to maintain user engagement with the agent and retention in the intervention. A longitudinal randomized controlled experiment tested user attitudes towards the agent when it presented the stories in first person (as its own history) compared to third person (as happening to humans that it knew). Participants in the first person condition reported enjoying their interactions with the agent significantly more and completed more conversations with the agent, compared to participants in the third person condition, while ratings of agent dishonesty were not significantly different between the groups.

Do I remember you? Memory and identity in multiple embodiments

“…This is certianly non-trivial for robot embodiments. The internet-based support agents for the elderly of [3] is a rare example of an environment in which such studies could be located.…”

“…The logistics of testing long-term memory effects on interaction in the workplace are formidable, though this has been managed over the internet [3], where it significantly increased the persuasive impact on the user in the context of behavioural change for better health. However in geographically co-located interaction, even short-term memory effects do not appear to have so far been investigated.…”

Extending a Teachable Agent with a Social Conversation Module – Effects on Student Experiences and Learning

“…In [6] he coined the term relational agent, an agent designed to develop and maintain long-term, socio-emotional relations with users, and he has conducted a large number of studies that compare relation-oriented and strictly task-oriented agents and explore various off-domain sociability features. The value of autobiographical stories in agents is investigated in [13], with reference to Jakobson's [14] phatic function of dialogue: to keep the communication channel open so that primary functional messages can be conveyed. The authors [13] propose that autobiographical storytelling by an agent is a central means for maintaining user engagement in an intervention over time -which can be crucial for educational applications.…”

“…The value of autobiographical stories in agents is investigated in [13], with reference to Jakobson's [14] phatic function of dialogue: to keep the communication channel open so that primary functional messages can be conveyed. The authors [13] propose that autobiographical storytelling by an agent is a central means for maintaining user engagement in an intervention over time -which can be crucial for educational applications. Yet they also point at the importance that the stories that an agent tells are truly engaging.…”

Enhancing Embodied Conversational Agents with Social and Emotional Capabilities

“…The work on ECAs thus incorporates more than natural language understanding; it also includes other aspects of cognitive modeling, such as models of emotion and social skills. The last few years have seen a large increase in the research that has been done on modeling emotions [1][2][3][4][5] and on modeling social skills [6][7][8].…”