Evoking an Intentional Stance during Human-Agent Social Interaction: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Abstract

A critical issue during human-agent and human-robot interaction is eliciting an intentional stance in the human interactor, whereas the human perceives the agent as a fully "intelligent" being with full agency towards their own intentions and desires. Eliciting such a stance, however, has proven elusive, despite work in cognitive science, robotics, and human-computer interaction over the past half-century. Here, we argue for a paradigm shift in our approach to this problem, based on a synthesis of recent evidence from social robotics and digital avatars. In short, in order to trigger an intentional stance in humans, perhaps our artificial agents need to adopt one about themselves.