Users' Perspectives on Value Awareness in Social Robots

TL;DR

The first step of this line of search was a focus group that explored the expectations towards value aware robots of users. In total, 17 Italians between 15 and 29 years of age took part to a series of activities, such as brainstorming and drawing. The participants had no prior experience with robots, and the results revealed that they primarily viewed home-based robots as tools for automating household tasks rather than companions. Two major concerns surfaced: safety and privacy, reflecting media tropes and recurring themes in human-robot interaction discussions.

Abstract

The ability of an artificial interactive system to understand human values and align its actions and decisions with them is important and this is particularly salient in the home environment, thanks to the greater intimacy and more relaxed social structures in private contexts. The technical aspect of building value-aware social robots is further compounded by the fact that people typically see robots as not just a designed artefact, but instead assume intentionality behind a robot’s actions. However, little is known about how aware the public is about the need for value-aligned robots, how we will interact with this new and powerful technology and what place we want value-aware robots to take in our lives. This paper explores views on value-aware social robots in the home environment through a series of focus groups. The results show that people are largely unaware and as such unconcerned about a potential mismatch between a robot’s behaviour and our own values.

@misc{10.5281/zenodo.8123741,
author       = {Abbo, Giulio Antonio and Belpaeme, Tony},
title        = {Users' Perspectives on Value Awareness in Social Robots},
month        = mar,
year         = 2023,
publisher    = {Zenodo},
doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.8123742},
url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8123742},
abstract     = {The ability of an artificial interactive system to understand human values and align its actions and decisions with them is important and this is particularly salient in the home environment, thanks to the greater intimacy and more relaxed social structures in private contexts. The technical aspect of building value-aware social robots is further compounded by the fact that people typically see robots as not just a designed artefact, but instead assume intentionality behind a robot's actions. However, little is known about how aware the public is about the need for value-aligned robots, how we will interact with this new and powerful technology and what place we want value-aware robots to take in our lives. This paper explores views on value-aware social robots in the home environment through a series of focus groups. The results show that people are largely unaware and as such unconcerned about a potential mismatch between a robot's behaviour and our own values.}
}