The Rise of Social Robots: How AI Can Help Us Flourish
Judging by the latest headlines, artificial intelligence (AI) is a double-edged sword with the power to create vast economic efficiencies while decimating jobs and industries.
Cynthia Breazeal, an associate professor of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focuses her research at the micro-level, exploring AI’s positive impacts on individuals in their everyday lives.
“I don’t think that AI will have fulfilled its full potential unless it can unlock human potential,” said Breazeal, one of several featured speakers at a recent academic conference about the intersection of technology and human psychology. “Can AI help us become who we aspire to be? Can it help us live not just more productive but better, more fulfilling lives?”
Breazeal, a leader in the field of social robotics, was a keynote at the Psychology of Technology Conference, co-hosted by UVA Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and the Psychology of Technology Institute. After launching the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, Breazeal and her collaborators have been studying and developing “social robots,” which interact and work with humans in an interpersonal way, helping them achieve their goals and improve the quality of their lives. “We are facing a lot of challenges,” said Breazeal, “in health care, in education, in aging, and, if developed the right way, AI can really help us.”
There’s no question that personal robots and other AI systems are becoming a growing presence in our lives. But while Apple’s Siri, Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa can carry out certain tasks, they can’t truly support who we are, according to Breazeal. “When we talk about human flourishing,” she said, “it’s not about brief encounters with AI. Positive emotions, meaning, a sense of achievement, relationships — all those things are extremely important. I call it ‘relational AI’ — AI that can understand us as people and treat us as people.”
Breazeal believes that we need to appreciate human social and emotional psychology and design the robots according to the principles of how people interact with one another. “A social robot,” she said, “should feel much more like you’re interacting with a someone rather than a something.”
Jibo, a robot the size of a small table lamp developed in Breazeal’s lab, offers a great example. Like other social robots, Jibo was designed to win us over not with its cognitive prowess but with its personality and sociability.
