International Law

Robotic thoughts

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Notwithstanding my view that the prisoner's dilemma game is both the most over researched and under studied experiment in all of social psychology, Mind Hacks points to a mildly interesting article.

"One study that found that the perceived 'human-ness' of another player in a game altered the extent of activation in brain areas associated with understanding others' mental states.

The participants were asked to play the prisoner's dilemma game in a brain scanner and were introduced to four opponents - software on a laptop, a laptop controlled by robotic hands, a humanoid robot and a real human.

In reality though, the other players' moves were all randomly generated."

And what do you think happened when humans thought that there might be some coordinated point or team work in playing the game?

"The game thus requires each player to try to get into the mind of the other, in order to predict what he might do.

This sort of thinking tends to increase activity in parts of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction.

The scanner showed that the more human-like the supposed opponent, the more such neural activity increased.

A questionnaire also revealed that the volunteers enjoyed the games most when they played human-like opponents, whom they perceived to be more intelligent.

Dr Krach and Dr Kircher reckon this shows that the less human-like a robot is in its appearance, the less it will be treated as if it were human. That may mean it will be trusted less--and might therefore not sell as well as a humanoid design."

Uh, no.  If you think, wrongly, that you are engaged with the social world you think differently than if you are engaged with the natural world.

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on September 18, 2008 (boomark / email).