Is Alexa like a computer? A search engine? A friend? A silly child? Yes.

Using Playful Metaphors to Conceptualize Practical Use of ChatGPT: An Autoethnography

“…A single simple metaphor is not a panacea. We often need a number of different contrasting metaphors, but it seems that people can cope rather well with such a multiplicity (Desai & Twidale, 2022). We speculate that wrapping a complex, potentially disturbing technology and its underlying algorithms and emergent consequences in a metaphorical coat might demystify and make the increased understanding a bit stickier (like Velcro, perhaps?).…”

“…But in most cases, the metaphor use is implied and conceptualized during analysis. We use Desai & Twidale (2022)'s work on metaphor analysis as a basis for our paper and apply its understanding to ChatGPT, with the help of three metaphors—a sounding board, an unreliable narrator, and a court jester. We use these metaphors to understand what ChatGPT is, when ChatGPT was employed, and how ChatGPT was utilized.…”

“…A closer inspection of the literature suggests that users' mental models are more complex than such simplistic metaphors imply. Desai & Twidale (2022) showed that the use of metaphors for conversational systems is contextually fluid and depends on the performed tasks. In some cases, the same user might (intentionally or unintentionally) use several metaphors to describe different aspects of the system.…”

Audience Design and Egocentrism in Reference Production During Human-Computer Dialogue

“…Recent work has begun to re-emphasise the importance of partner social roles in the design of conversational user interfaces (Desai & Twidale, 2022;Simpson & Crone, 2022) whereby the norms that come with these roles may influence our interaction. This may influence the way people choose to engage in perspective taking, leading them to either be more or less egocentric in language production if the computer is seen as being part of a task or separate from a task.…”

CUI@CHI 2024: Building Trust in CUIs—From Design to Deployment

“…Given the 'black-box' nature of conversational interfaces, users frequently rely on anthropic tendencies [28]. Anthropomorphism only serves as a means of sense-making or constructing a mental model in this context [16]. However, it is noteworthy that anthropomorphism is often intentionally incorporated into these interfaces, including the utilization of pronouns, natural-sounding voices, and the emulation of human-human communication models, among other techniques [16,22,23,34,40].…”