What will it be like to admit Artificial Companions into our society? How will they change our relations with each other? How important will they be in the emotional and practical lives of their owners since we know that people became emotionally dependent even on simple devices like the Tamagotchi? How much social life might they have in contacting each other? The contributors to this book discuss the possibility and desirability of some form of long-term computer Companions now being a certainty in the coming years. It is a good moment to consider, from a set of wide interdisciplinary perspectives, both how we shall construct them technically as well as their personal philosophical and social consequences. By Companions we mean conversationalists or confidants not robots but rather computer software agents whose function will be to get to know their owners over a long period. Those may well be elderly or lonely, and the contributions in the book focus not only on assistance via the internet (contacts, travel, doctors etc.) but also on providing company and Companionship, by offering aspects of real personalization.
1. Foreword;
2. Acknowledgements;
3. Contributors;
4. Section I. Setting
the scene;
5. In good company?: On the threshold of robotic Companions (by
Turkle, Sherry);
6. Introducing artificial Companions (by Wilks, Yorick);
7.
Section II. Ethical and philosophical issues;
8. Artificial Companions and
their philosophical challenges (by Floridi, Luciano);
9. Conditions for
Companionhood (by Pulman, Stephen G.);
10. Arius in cyberspace: Digital
Companions and the limits of the person (by O'Hara, Kieron);
11. Section III.
Social and psychological issues: What should a Companion be like?;
12.
Conversationalists and confidants (by Boden, Margaret A.);
13. Robots should
be slaves (by Bryson, Joanna J.);
14. Wanting the impossible: The dilemma at
the heart of intimate human-robot relationships (by Evans, Dylan);
15.
Falling in love with a Companion (by Levy, David);
16. Identifying your
accompanist (by Lowe, Will);
17. Look, emotion, language and behavior in a
believable virtual Companion (by Romano, Daniela M.);
18. New Companions (by
Taylor, Alex);
19. On being a Victorian Companion (by Wilks, Yorick);
20.
Section IV. Design issues: Building a Companion;
21. The use of affective
and attentive cues in an empathic computer-based Companions (by Bee,
Nikolaus);
22. GRETA: Towards an interactive conversational virtual Companion
(by Bevacqua, Elisabetta);
23. A world-hybrid approach to a conversational
Companion for reminiscing about images (by Catizone, Roberta);
24.
Companionship is an emotional business (by Cowie, Roddy);
25. Artificial
Companions in society: Consulting the users (by Newell, Alan);
26.
Requirements for Artificial Companions: It's harder than you think (by
Sloman, Aaron);
27. You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking
about you (by Winfield, Alan FT);
28. Section V. Special purpose Companions;
29. A Companion for learning in everyday life (by Eynon, Rebecca);
30. The
Maryland virtual patient as a task-oriented conversational Companion (by
Nirenburg, Sergei);
31. Living with robots: Ethical tradeoffs in eldercare
(by Sharkey, Noel);
32. Section VI. Afterword;
33. Summary and discussion of
the issues (by Peltu, Malcom);
34. References;
35. Index
