Some Ethical Issues for Persuasive Interfaces

Marco Guerini, Oliviero Stock

(ITC-irst, Trento, Italy)

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General Motivations

Interface agents are becoming more complex (autonomous, proactive, etc.) and common in our everyday life

Need for a design of ethical agents, especially when they are meant to persuade

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Specific Motivations

We are developing a prototype of a Persuasive System for monological interaction with human users

User Model

Context

Meta Reasoner

RR-selector

APML specification of the message

Abstract Reasoner

Strategies producer

PERSUASIVE PLANNER

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State of the Art (1/2)

Up to now attention has been given to the sketching of guidelines, considering mainly privacy and attribution.

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State of the Art (2/2)

Privacy: how information, interface agents may collect about us, is used.

Attribution: the problem of misleading behaviours on the part of the interface deriving from user’s (over)attribution of humanity traits and capabilities to the system.

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Needs

The behaviour of the autonomous persuasive agent has not been in the focus so far (an exception is Berdichevsky & Neuenschwander, 1999)

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General questions: is ethical…

1. …a system that tells the truth but hides important information from the receiver? Or, tells the false, e.g. for the sake of good of the receiver?

2. …a system using information/ conclusions / values that are not believed in by it (or by its developer), but that are believed by the msg receiver?

3. …a system that hides his true intentions?

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General questions: is it ethical…

4. …if the overall goal of the persuasive message is not among the interests of the receiver?

5. …to make the user act against his own interests?

6. …to induce extreme emotions in the receiver?

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Concepts Necessary for a Solution

Cognitive, meta-ethical and emotion notions are central for elaborating an answer to these questions. E.g.

Question 4 Tutorial Goal Question 5 Supererogatory acts Question 6 Typology of emotions

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Challenges

The challenge, in the long run, is to create agents that are ethically aware (i.e. capable of reasoning on the ethicality of their actions and possibly to correct their behaviour).

Ethical capabilities to be encoded at the Meta-reasoning level

Transparency of the interface through emotion expressions