1st Workshop on Shaping Human-Agent Interactions Through Interdisciplinary Theories

The rapid advancement in artificial intelligence, especially in machine learning and deep learning, has accelerated the introduction of AI agents into humans' daily lives. This has increased interactions between humans and agents, such as home assistants, customer service chatbots, and robots in education and healthcare. These human-agent interactions (HAI) are becoming integral to various aspects of life, such as performing tasks that support, entertain, and participate in educational activities. As HAI becomes more pervasive, understanding and optimising it and studying how it affects human behaviour are crucial to ensure its effective and safe integration across multiple domains.

The extensive interactions between humans and agents highlighted several problems. (1) Most of these interactions are command-based or question-answering systems, lacking the ability to interact intuitively with humans [1]. (2) Non-use and rejection of agents when applied in real-world scenarios [2]. (3) Increased concern over their ethical and social impact on human behaviour and society [3]. (4) Not designed to manage breakdown situations [4,5].  These problems emerged due to the machine-centric perspective on developing human-agent interactions (HAI). This perspective overlooks the social and ethical aspects and explainable decision-making in agents. 

Coping with these problems, an alternative perspective to study, understand, and develop HAI that has emerged recently is Human-centered AI (HCAI). HCAI focuses on developing agents capable of collaborating with people to help them achieve their goals effectively, by putting focus on the human[6]. 

The workshop will explore psychological and cognitive aspects of HAI, exploring how human behaviour and mental models influence and are influenced by interactions with agents. It will also cover design principles that ensure agents are user-friendly, engaging, and capable of meeting the needs of their human counterparts. Well-known theories include proxemics theory, which studies the use of space in interactions; dialogue theory, which focuses on the dynamics of conversational exchanges between humans and agents; collective intentionality, which examines shared goals and collaborative efforts between humans and agents, and the Theory of Mind, which considers how agents can be designed to understand and predict human mental states. Further, as human-agent interaction proliferates, questions about how technology shapes identity and human-human connections, drawing from science and technology studies, will become ever-pressing. The use of AI in media selection has steered users toward political extremes. Furthermore, the usage of AI impacts connection and coordination between humans in a wide variety of contexts, from the workplace to the classroom. Perhaps in the future, artificial intelligence will change even more fundamental parts of identity, our relationship to knowledge storage, our relationship to the built world, and maybe even our social lives. As we shape technology, technology also shapes us.

References

[1] Ahmed, E., Buruk, O. O., and Hamari, J. Robots as human companions: A review. In Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (2022), Association for Information Systems, p. 246.

[2] De Graaf, M., Ben Allouch, S., and Van Dijk, J. Why do they refuse to use my robot? reasons for non-use derived from a long-term home study. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction (2017), pp. 224–233.

[3] Wullenkord, R., and Eyssel, F. Societal and ethical issues in HRI. Current Robotics Reports 1 (2020), 2662–4087.

[4] Tewari, M., and Lindgren, H. Expecting, understanding, relating, and interacting- older, middle-aged and younger adults’ perspectives on breakdown situations in human–robot dialogues. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 9 (2022).

[5] Tian, L., and Oviatt, S. A taxonomy of social errors in human-robot interaction. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI) 10, 2 (2021), 1–32.

[6] Nowak, A., Lukowicz, P., and Horodecki, P. Assessing artificial intelligence for humanity: Will ai be our biggest ever advance ? or the biggest threat. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 37, 4 (2018), 26–34.

Workshop topics include, but are not limited to:  

• Human-Agent Interaction

•  HAI and human behaviour

•  Human-Agent Interaction Design

•  Proxemics Theory

•  Dialogue Theory

•  Activity Theory

•  Collective Intentionality

•  Theory of Mind

•  Belief-Desire-Intention

•  Cyborg theory

•  More-than-human interaction

•  Ecology/technology

TheoriseHAI will have the following tentative shedule:

9.00 Workshop introduction

9.15 Keynote talk 1: Prof. Helena Lindgren

10.00 Coffee break

10.30 Lighting talks

12.00 Lunch

13.15 Keynote talk 2: Prof. Balazs Vedres 

14.00 Group activity

15.00 Posters

16.00 End of the workshop

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit extended abstracts related to the relevant workshop topics. Submissions would be typically work-in-progress research, position papers, and summaries of already published research on application of interdisciplinary theories, theoretical developments, practical applications, or design innovations in HAI. Submissions will be peer-reviewed, and accepted papers will be presented at the workshop.

Submissions can be up to 2-page long (excluding references). Papers must be in PDF format, including abstract, figures and references, and according to the ACM SIGCHI format (Latex template, Word template). The reviewing will be single-blind. All submissions will be made electronically through the EasyChair conference system (link). All accepted extended abstracts will be published on the workshop website. 

At least one of the authors will be required to attend the workshop to present the paper. 

• Paper submission deadline: 10 October 2024

• Notification of acceptance: 24 October 2024

• Camera-ready version: 7 November 2024

• Workshop: 24 November 2024

Contact us at: maittewa[at]cs.umu.se

We are looking forward to your participation!