What discourse features aren't needed in on-line dialogue (original) (raw)
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With the increasing ubiquity of natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, interacting with “conversational artificial agents” such as speaking robots, chatbots, and personal assistants will be an everyday occurrence for most people. In a rather innocuous sense, we can perform a variety of speech acts with them, from asking a question to telling a joke, as they respond to our input just as any other agent would. However, in a stricter, philosophical sense, the question of what we are doing when we interact with these agents is less trivial, as the conversational instances are growing in complexity, interactivity, and anthropomorphic believability. For example, open domain chatbots will soon be capable of holding conversations on a virtually unlimited range of topics. Many philosophical questions are brought up in this development that this special issue aims to address. Are we engaging in a “discourse” when we “argue” with a chatbot? Do they perform speech acts akin to human agents, or do we require different explanations to understand this kind of interactivity? In what way do artificial agents “understand” language, partake in discourse and create text? Are our conversational assumptions andprojections transferable, and should we model artificial speakers along those conventions? Will their moral utterances ever have validity? This special issue of Minds and Machines invites papers discussing a range of topics on human-machine communication and the philosophical presumptions and consequences for developing, distributing, and interacting with speaking robots. We invite the submission of papers focusing on but not restricted to: - What are philosophically sound distinctions between speaking robots, unembodied chatbots, and other forms of artificial speakers? - What constitutes discourse participants, and can artificial speakers ever meet those requirements? - Can artificial speakers perform speech acts, and if yes, can they perform all speech acts humans can perform? Or do robots perform unique speech acts? - What kind of artificial agent can be capable of what kind of language or discourse performance: chatbots, robots, virtual agents,…? - What is the role of anthropomorphism in modelling chatbots as possible discourse participants? - What is the role of technomorphism in modelling human interlocutors as technical discourse participants? - What are the normative consequences of moral statements made by artificial discourse participants? - How will communicative habits between humans change by the presence of artificial speakers? - How can semantic theories explain the meaning-creation of artificial speakers? - Are normative conventions in human-human communication (politeness, compliments) relevant and transformable/transferrable to human-machine communication? - Are there – analogous to human-human communication – any communicative presuppositions in human-machine communication? To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager https://www.editorialmanager.com/mind/default.aspx Deadline to submit full paper: October 1st, 2020 First round of reviews: October 2nd – December 1st, 2020 Deadline to resubmit paper: December 15th, 2020 Second round of reviews: December 15th – December 31st, 2020 Deadline for final paper: December 31st, 2020 Publication of special edition: March 2021
Conversation and Its Erosion Into Discourse and Computation
2011
In my answer to Ernst von Glasersfeld's (2008) question "Who conceives Society?" I proposed a radically social constructivism ) that overcomes what I perceive to be an unfortunate cognitivism in von Glasersfeld's, Heinz von Foerster's, and Humberto Maturana's work. Since then, I published two other papers on the subject. One (2008b) moves the notion of human agency into the center of my project, focusing on its role in conceptions of social organizations -a concept less grand than "society" and one (2008c) teases out several reflexive turns that have grown in cybernetics but cannot be subsumed by the epistemology of radical constructivism and second-order cybernetics, which privileges observation and a representational theory of language over participation in conversation and cooperative constructions of reality. In all of these efforts, conversation has become the starting point of my conceptualizations of being human. In this essay, I wish to discuss what conversation entails, how it is maintained, and under which conditions it degenerates into something else.
2020
Exploring Artificial Intelligence-Mediated Communication (AIMC) as a sub-field of Communication Studies? A Textual Examination. Md Nurul Karim Bhuiyan, Minnesota State University, Mankato, December 2020. From the book "Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication," written by John Durham Peters, we understand a notion about developing one’s destiny; people have the freedom to choose multiple paths to follow (Peters, 2012). If we reject this idea, it is also easy for people to come up with distinct explanations. Even though the meaning of the same issues might vary subject to who is interpreting them, the primary concepts can be interpreted as more or less the same. If we study these two--"artificial intelligence" and "communication"simultaneously, we can assume some characteristics. Thus, this project analyzes three different scholarly articles to extrapolate the real meaning of AIMC, and a variety of approaches, and devise how artifici...
The Future of Social Dialogue in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Postmodern Openings, 2019
The survival of social dialogue depends on the extent of the social changes, being conditioned by the maintenance of the labour relations and by the models of representation of trade union type. Uncertainties regarding the future of work are automatically transformed into uncertainties regarding the future of trade unionism and social dialogue. Work is a type of social relationship that has significantly contributed to who we are. We can assume that as long as humanity lasts, work will exist (not necessarily with its present significance). We consider that the fate of social dialogue is linked to the future of trade unionism. Unions try to defend a model of balance needed within a specific type of social relations called labour relations. In order for the unions to have chances of survival (and, together with them, the social dialogue as well) these must embrace change, orientating it in the directions appropriate to their purpose. We use the phrase cyber-unionism because the main recommended way is the involvement of the unions in the use and development of AI, respectively of the new technologies and of the specific research. The overall solution: a reform of trade unionism based on a new ideology and the increase of power as a result of the use of new technologies. The scenarios proposed in this article go beyond an obvious limit: they explore the possibilities of evolution of the society using possible solutions in order to meet our current goals. The solutions discussed do not take into account the change of the wishes of the people in time, being impossible to anticipate the directions of evolution of the objectives of humanity. Our approach is between what we think it will be and what we think it should be.
Conversation: Possibilities of its Repair and Descent into Discourse and Computation
Constructivist Foundations, 2009
This essay contends that radical constructivism makes a mistake by focusing on cognition at the expense of where cognitive phenomena surface: in the interactive use of language. By contrast, it advocates a radically social constructivism grounded in the conversational nature of being human. It also urges to abandon the celebration of observation, inherited from the enlightenment's preoccupation with description, in favor of participation, the recognition that speaking and writing are acts of continuously reconstructing reality, only partly conceivable by participants yet interactively realized. It distinguishes between conversation as observed and conversation as articulated by its participants. It postulates accountability as a chief conversational move through which conversations can regain their natural flow when disturbed and construct inherently ethical realities for their participants. Unwillingness to repair problematic conversations amounts to acquiescence to constraints that are typical of discourses and the construction of institutional realities. It suggests that the ultimate institutionalization consists of replacing institutional artifacts by computational ones, which was the aim of early cybernetics. Computational artifacts have no agency and cannot be held accountable for what they do. This essay proposes a continuum of possible discourses between authentic conversation and computation. It concludes by calling for drawing finer distinctions within that continuum and expresses the hope for not closing off the possibility of returning to authentic conversation where humans realize their being human, not institutional actors or machines.
The person-machine confrontation: Investigations into the pragmatics of dialogism
AI & Society, 1996
Erroneously attributing propositional attitudes (desires, beliefs...) to computational artefacts has become internationally commonplace in the public arena, especially amongst the new generation of non-initiated users. Technology for rendering machines "user-friendly" is often inspired by interpersonal human communication. This calls forth designers to conceptualise a major component of human intelligence: the sense of communicability, and its logical consequences. The inherent incommunicability of machines subsequently causes a shift in design strategy. Though cataloguing components of bouts between person and machine with Speech Act Theory has been popular, I will endeavour to present the sine qua non for their insertion into a larger unit of discourse-their societal embodiment. I shall argue that the so-called "intelligence" of the artificial should to be seen as a purposeful act that is socially generated, because it comes of Man, for Man. Designership will provide the forum for evolving user requirements and interface renewal.