The perils of anthropomorphism

The Cognitive Correlates of Anthropomorphism

While anthropomorphism in human-robot interaction is often discussed, it still appears to lack formal grounds. We recently proposed a first model of the dynamics of anthropomorphism that reflects the evolution of anthropomorphism in the human-robot interaction over time. The model also accounts for non-monotonic effects like the so-called novelty effect. This contribution proposes to build upon...

Anthropomorphism Revisited

The MIT scientist Donald Griffin, widely-recognized for his experimental confirmation that bats use echo location in tracking insects and avoiding obstacles in the dark (Griffin, 1958/1974), later wrote widely defending the view that other animals are consciously aware and intelligent, like humans (Griffin, 1976, 2001). Based on the assumption that an example of possible human-like cleverness i...

The perils of snowmobiling.

Snowmobiling is a popular winter sport in Wisconsin, but it can result in serious injury and death. From 1998-2002, 1090 people in Wisconsin were hospitalized due to injuries related to snowmobiling. From 2002 to 2004, 51 snowmobile-related fatalities were reported to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Multiple risk factors exist for snowmobile injury and death, with alcohol consump...

The Perils of Presidentialism

Robots and Anthropomorphism

Our natural tendency to anthropomorphism, grounded in Theory of Mind and related psychological mechanisms, is crucial to our interactions with robots. Some relatively superficial aspects of robots (e.g. physical appearance) can trigger animistic, even empathetic, responses on the part of human beings. Other factors are more subtle, e.g. various aspects of the language (if any) used by the artif...