Artificial intelligence and communication: A Human–Machine Communication research agenda

Artificial intelligence (AI) and people’s interactions with it—through virtual agents, socialbots, and language-generation software—do not fit neatly into paradigms of communication theory that have long focused on human–human communication. To address this disconnect between communication theory and emerging technology, this article provides a starting point for articulating the differences between communicative AI and previous technologies and introduces a theoretical basis for navigating these conditions in the form of scholarship within human–machine communication (HMC). Drawing on an HMC framework, we outline a research agenda built around three key aspects of communicative AI technologies: (1) the functional dimensions through which people make sense of these devices and applications as communicators, (2) the relational dynamics through which people associate with these technologies and, in turn, relate to themselves and others, and (3) the metaphysical implications called up by blurring ontological boundaries surrounding what constitutes human, machine, and communication.

[1]  Zvi Reich,et al.  I, Robot. You, Journalist. Who is the Author? , 2017 .

[2]  F. Al-Shamali,et al.  Author Biographies. , 2015, Journal of social work in disability & rehabilitation.

[3]  M. Mcluhan.  Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man , 1964 .

[4]  Denham L. Phipps.  The human–computer interaction handbook: fundamentals, evolving technologies and emerging applications (3rd ed) , 2013 .

[5]  S. Sundar.  The MAIN Model : A Heuristic Approach to Understanding Technology Effects on Credibility , 2007 .

[6]  Michael Reinhard,et al.  The Process And Effects Of Mass Communication , 2016 .

[7]  Konstantin Dörr,et al.  Mapping the field of Algorithmic Journalism , 2016 .

[8]  Michael B. Salwen,et al.  Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication , 2000 .

[9]  Andrea L. Guzman,et al.  Automation, Journalism, and Human–Machine Communication: Rethinking Roles and Relationships of Humans and Machines in News , 2019, Digital Journalism.

[10]  Joseph Weizenbaum,et al.  ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine , 1966, CACM.

[11]  Steve Jones.  People, things, memory and human-machine communication , 2014 .

[12]  F. E. Dance,et al.  The “Concept” of Communication , 1970 .

[13]  C. Nass,et al.  Machines and Mindlessness , 2000 .

[14]  W. Buxton.  Human-Computer Interaction , 1988, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[15]  Patric R. Spence,et al.  Robots in the classroom: Differences in students' perceptions of credibility and learning between "teacher as robot" and "robot as teacher" , 2016, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[16]  Netzwerke Datenkommunikation,et al.  Communication Theory as a Field , 2011 .

[17]  Randall Livingstone.  Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality , 2019, Inf. Soc..

[18]  鈴木 聡.  Media Equation 研究の背景と動向 , 2011 .

[19]  Lee Rainie,et al.  The internet of things connectivity binge: what are the implications? , 2017 .

[20]  F. Eyssel,et al.  (S)he's Got the Look: Gender Stereotyping of Robots1 , 2012 .

[21]  Meredith Broussard,et al.  Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World , 2018 .

[22]  Laura Stark.  What Is a Human? What the Answers Mean for Human Rights , 2018 .

[23]  Stefan Kopp,et al.  Dominant and submissive nonverbal behavior of virtual agents and its effects on evaluation and negotiation outcome in different age groups , 2019, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[24]  Everett M. Rogers,et al.  Communication Technology: The New Media in Society , 1986 .

[25]  David J. Gunkel.  Communication and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges for the 21st Century , 2012 .

[26]  Everett M. Rogers,et al.  A History of Communication Study: A Biographical Approach , 1994 .

[27]  Christer Clerwall.  Enter the Robot Journalist , 2014 .

[28]  Rinaldo Kühne,et al.  The New Frontier in Communication Research: Why We Should Study Social Robots , 2018 .

[29]  D. Fitch,et al.  Review of "Algorithms of oppression: how search engines reinforce racism," by Noble, S. U. (2018). New York, New York: NYU Press. , 2018, CDQR.

[30]  Sima'anKhalil,et al.  Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship , 2006 .

[31]  Filippo Menczer,et al.  The rise of social bots , 2014, Commun. ACM.

[32]  Winifred R. Poster,et al.  5. The Virtual Receptionist with a Human Touch: Opposing Pressures of Digital Automation and Outsourcing in Interactive Services , 2019 .

[33]  Joshua Reeves.  Automatic for the people: the automation of communicative labor , 2016 .

[34]  W. Ramsey,et al.  The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence , 2014 .

[35]  Shanyang Zhao,et al.  Humanoid social robots as a medium of communication , 2006, New Media Soc..

[36]  R. Morrison.  Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist , 1936 .

[37]  Andrea L. Guzman.  Voices in and of the machine: Source orientation toward mobile virtual assistants , 2019, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[38]  G. Mead.  Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Works of George Herbert Mead, Vol. 1) , 1934 .

[39]  Clifford Nass,et al.  Source Orientation in Human-Computer Interaction , 2000, Commun. Res..

[40]  David J. Gunkel.  The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics , 2012 .

[41]  Mike Ananny,et al.  Toward an Ethics of Algorithms , 2016 .

[42]  Andrea L. Guzman.  Making AI Safe for Humans: A Conversation with Siri , 2016 .

[43]  Patric R. Spence,et al.  Searching for questions, original thoughts, or advancing theory: Human-machine communication , 2019, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[44]  Daniel J. Nicholson.  Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life , 2011 .

[45]  W. Schramm.  The Story of Human Communication: Cave Painting to Microchip , 1988 .

[46]  Nicole Shechtman,et al.  Media inequality in conversation: how people behave differently when interacting with computers and people , 2003, CHI '03.

[47]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[48]  Yi Mou,et al.  The media inequality: Comparing the initial human-human and human-AI social interactions , 2017, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[49]  Eleanor Sandry,et al.  Robots and Communication , 2015 .

[50]  A. Primo,et al.  Who And What Do Journalism? , 2015 .

[51]  Barbara J. Grosz,et al.  Natural-Language Processing , 1982, Artificial Intelligence.

[52]  H. Innis.  The Bias of Communication , 1964 .

[53]  Seth C. Lewis,et al.  Libel by Algorithm? Automated Journalism and the Threat of Legal Liability , 2019 .

[54]  Lucy Suchman,et al.  Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions , 2006 .

[55]  Robert Trappl,et al.  Agent Culture: Human-Agent Interaction in a Multicultural World , 2004 .

[56]  S. Lewis,et al.  Actors, Actants, Audiences, and Activities in Cross-Media News Work , 2015 .

[57]  Leopoldina Fortunati,et al.  Robotization and the domestic sphere , 2018, New Media Soc..

[58]  A. Graefe,et al.  Readers’ perception of computer-generated news: Credibility, expertise, and readability , 2018 .

[59]  M. Carlson,et al.  The Robotic Reporter , 2015 .

[60]  Clifford Nass,et al.  Computers are social actors , 1994, CHI '94.

[61]  Jonathan Grudin,et al.  A Moving Target””The Evolution of Human-Computer Interaction , 2017 .

[62]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Socially Intelligent Agents in Human Primate Culture , 2004 .

[63]  David J. Gunkel.  Ars Ex Machina : Rethinking Responsibility in the Age of Creative Machines , 2019 .

[64]  Eleanor Sandry,et al.  Aliveness and the off-switch in human-robot relations , 2018 .

[65]  Ryan Calo.  Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw , 2014 .

[66]  Leah A. Lievrouw,et al.  NEW MEDIA, MEDIATION, AND COMMUNICATION STUDY1 , 2009 .

[67]  Raja Chatila,et al.  The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems , 2019, Robotics and Well-Being.