Will Societal Behavior Soon Be Controlled by Robots?
Will Societal Behavior Soon Be Controlled by Robots?
New research has shown that robots can encourage humans to take greater risks in a simulated gambling scenario than they would if there was nothing to influence their behaviors. A study performed by the University of Southampton has explored the effect robots have on risk-taking and, most significantly, the ethical, practical, and policy implications of their influence. Dr. Yaniv Hanoch, Associate Professor in Risk Management at the University of Southampton, who led the study, explained, “We know that peer pressure can lead to higher risk-taking behaviour. With the ever-increasing scale of interaction between humans and technology, both online and physically, it is crucial that we understand more about whether machines can have a similar impact.”
This new research, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, involved 180 undergraduate students taking the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a computer assessment that asks participants to press the spacebar on a keyboard to inflate a balloon displayed on the screen. One-third of the participants took the test in a room on their own (the control group), one third took the test alongside a robot that only provided them with the instructions but was silent the rest of the time, and the final, the experimental group, took the test with the robot providing instruction as well as speaking encouraging statements such as “why did you stop pumping?” The results showed no significant difference in the students’ behaviors accompanied by the silent robot and those with no robot. However, the group who were encouraged by the robot earned more money overall and, most importantly, took more risks, blowing up their balloons significantly more frequently than those in the other groups.
Dr. Hanoch’s study provokes an interesting perspective on the concept of cascading behavior in networks, specifically, diffusion. Cascading behavior in networks is rooted in the idea that our decisions are often most impacted by the decisions made by our friends and colleagues, rather than the full population. The underlying model of individual decision-making shows that as individuals make decisions based on their neighbors’ choices, a particular pattern of behavior can begin to spread across the links of a network. This model, typically, is for human behavior. However, Dr. Hanoch’s study might give us valuable insights into the role robots might have in this model of cascading behavior.
The results of his study showed that robots greatly influenced individuals to enact riskier behaviors; Dr. Hanoch said: “Receiving direct encouragement from a risk-promoting robot seemed to override participants’ direct experiences and instincts.” As seen by participants in networks, an individual’s decision to behave one way or the other is heavily influenced by the decisions of those around them, of friends, family, or coworkers. However, this recent study shows that even robots might significantly impact the decisions we make and the behaviors we enact. Perhaps this is due to how robots are built so cleverly to mimic how a real human might act, thus providing realistic persuasion over the study participants.
As technology continues to develop, more and more of our daily face-to-face interactions with other people are substituted with technology. Thus, new forms of technology, such as robots and other artificial intelligence systems, may start to replace the actual people that used to fill our social networks. I would argue that we already have ways in which human influence is replaced by computer-generated influence over people’s behaviors, in forms such as digital assistants or on-screen avatars. Robots, and other AI systems, have begun to take up a significant role in our social and information networks and become a considerable part of our information-gathering and decision-making processes.
As Dr. Hanoch’s study shows, robots do have the potential to influence human behavior; as robots’ presence grows in our lives, they may begin to garner enough of a collective presence in our social and information networks to trigger cascading behavior among networked individuals. As Dr. Hanoch concluded, “With the widespread of AI technology and its interactions with humans, this is an area that needs urgent attention from the research community. On the one hand, our results might raise alarms about the prospect of robots causing harm by increasing risky behavior. On the other hand, our data points to the possibility of using robots and AI in preventive programs, such as anti-smoking campaigns in schools, and with hard to reach populations, such as addicts.”
Journal Reference:
Yaniv Hanoch, Francesco Arvizzigno, Daniel Hernandez García, Sue Denham, Tony Belpaeme, Michaela Gummerum. The Robot Made Me Do It: Human–Robot Interaction and Risk-Taking Behavior. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2020; DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2020.0148
Article Source:
University of Southampton. “‘The robot made me do it’: Robots encourage risk-taking behavior in people.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 December 2020. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201211100646.htm.