[TMP-050] Exploring the impact of Agency on Human-Computer Partnerships

Contact person: Janin Koch (Janin.Koch@inria.fr) 

Internal Partners:

1. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Albrecht Schmidt
2. Københavns Universitet, Kasper Hornbaek
3. Stichting VU, Koen Hindriks
4. Umeå University, Helena Lindgren  

The aim of the project is to investigate both the theoretical and empirical roles of agency in successful human-computer partnerships. For human-centred AI research, the understanding of agency is a key factor in achieving effective collaboration. Although recent advances in AI have enabled systems to successfully contribute to human-computer interaction, we are interested in extending this such that the interaction acts more like a ‘partnership’. This requires building systems with collaborative agency that users can manipulate in the process. Research questions include: 1) identifying which parameters are relevant to the description of the system agency, 2) what impact these parameters have on the perceived agency and 3) how to modify them in order to achieve different roles of systems in a process.

Results Summary

We conducted individual and collaborative brainstorming sessions with all participants to create an initial overview of current literature in order to establish a common starting point (1). We talked about potential overlaps in our work and how such perspectives influence our current work. We will hold a workshop at CHI’23 on ‘Integrating AI in Human-Human Collaborative Ideation’ to examine the role AI can play in such interactive environments in order to identify distinct dimensions  and measures of agency within human-ai interaction (2) [Shin et al. , 2023]. Umeå has also investigated how conversations between a human and a socially intelligent robot in a home environment can influence perceptions of agency [Tewari and Lindgren, 2022] and the importance of goal setting in such a scenario [Lindgren and Weck, 2022; Kilic et al., 2023] (3). 

Tangible Outcomes

1. Tewari M and Lindgren H (2022), Expecting, understanding, relating, and interacting – older, middle-aged and younger adults’ perspectives on breakdown situations in human–robot dialogues. Front. Robot. AI 9:956709. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2022.956709.  https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence/articles/10.3389/frai.2023.1069455/full
2. Kilic K, Weck S, Kampik T, Lindgren H. Argument-Based Human-AI Collaboration for Supporting Behavior Change to Improve Health. to appear in Front. AI, 2023.  https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/robotics-and-ai/articles/10.3389/frobt.2022.956709/full
3. Lindgren H and Weck S. 2022. Contextualising Goal Setting for Behaviour Change – from Baby Steps to Value Directions. In 33rd European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (ECCE2022), October 4–7, 2022, Kaiserslautern,Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3552327.3552342 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3552327.3552342
4. Joongi Shin, Janin Koch, Andrés Lucero, Peter Dalsgaard, Wendy E. Mackay. Integrating AI in Human-Human Collaborative Ideation. CHI 2023 – SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, Apr 2023, Hamburg, Germany. pp.1-5. ⟨hal04023507⟩  https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3573802