Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
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Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#2Not only robots, I also feel some empathic embarrassment towards text generated by an LLM sometimes (for instance if it tries to be funny but isn't the least bit)...
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#3Humans can also feel empathetic embarrassment, and a full range of other emotions, towards lumps of clay, ink marks on paper and things that don't exist.
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#4[flagged]
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#5This became evident to me when I felt sad after seeing that robot that's constantly wiping its oil, which looks like blood, towards itself.
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#6Humans felt empathy for 'pet rocks' -- we just project empathy onto the world sort in the same way that we see faces in things which don't contain faces. Quite a bit of the "normal" interaction that people do is just emotional projection. If two people are on the same wavelength, then it can really feel like you're reading them correctly. Sometimes you are, but sometimes you're just projecting onto them, and they're projecting onto you. When the topic is simple, this works easily. eg: "hey, isn't this music band great!" -- there's no need for great accuracy in a situation like that. The more complex a topic becomes, the more this falls apart.
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#7I anthropomorphize the heck out of my vacuuming robot so this doesn't surprise me. When it gets entangled in cables or stuck in odd places, I verbally comfort it.
I'm a programmer. I know it's just a machine. It still makes me feel good to show it some empathy. If I cuss at Google Home for not understanding what I tell it, I might as well express positive emotions too. I find that the negativity otherwise spills over to interactions with humans and animals.
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#8Can humans get traumatic stress disorder from playing VR war games?
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#9Can humans get traumatic stress disorder from playing VR war games?
I imagine the only limit would be finding a VR game that has enough stress, and playing it for long enough. Most people probably wouldn't willingly play a VR game that stressful for that long.
Re: Humans can feel empathic embarrassment towards robots, finds VR study
#10Humans can also feel empathetic embarrassment, and a full range of other emotions, towards lumps of clay, ink marks on paper and things that don't exist.
Anime characters in particular.
I don’t know if I’ll ever really do it but I’d love to do a sketch comedy routine together with a video game character reflected in a mirror, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost
Clearly if a robot is going to be designed to elicit feelings it’s going to use the methods used in anime, the stage, fiction, etc. For one thing you can simplify the process by building “sessile robots” like the peppers ghost thing that son’s have any moving parts but still use sensors to be aware of the environment or do a good job of faking it.