When I spent a lot of time in virtual worlds, it would sometimes surprise me that I’d be standing with a group of other avatars (ie figures that were being operated by people) and there’d be an agent or bot there (ie a figure that was operated by a software program) and the avatars would carry on chatting to the bot, completely oblivious to the fact that it wasn’t a person. Recently I needed to contact eBay about shipping costs from the US and all the time while chatting to their helpdesk was wondering whether I was chatting to a human or a machine. I couldn’t really tell, which is both an indication of how good the programming is, or how badly the guy I was talking to was doing at sounding human. I was talking to my brother about this a week or so ago and he said it never occurred to him to think about it. And if it did, would it matter? I guess it doesn’t. I got the answer I wanted, but it still felt a bit unnerving to not actually know.

One of the things I ended up looking for when looking at user experiences in virtual worlds was this tendency and ability to apply the Turing test (which gets explained below) – I called the process turing, so from a back construction (pretending it’s a verb to start with) you get people who tend to ture, and people who don’t. And people who are bad at it.

I started to write a paper about this, but never got far with it, one thing that I’d like to do and haven’t had the opportunity to is actually run some experiments on this. So instead of struggling on with the paper, I’ve posted it here.

I like big bots and I cannot lie

The need to be able to tell the difference between agents and avatars may not be important for people. For example, Nowak and Biocca found that, when participants were asked about their perceptions of copresence with avatars or agents, the degrees of copresence were equally as high for both.

“Given that the means in all conditions were well above the middle of the scale (representing relatively high levels of presence), it seems that users felt they had access to another mind and that the mind was attending to them and that they felt present in the virtual environment regardless of whether they interacted with an agent or avatar. (2003; 490).”

This presumes that for people’s interactions with agents to be highly effective they must be similar to that with avatars. Evidence supporting this assumption can be seen in experiments such as Kaptein et al (2011; 270) where it was found that social praise initiated by an agent contributed to the user liking the agent, but did not increase feelings of copresence since this praise was occasionally mistimed.

Draude specifically identifies trust as promoting a bond between agents and users (2011; 322), which when one considers the central role that trust plays in teamworking and collaboration may be a better indicator of effectiveness of human-agent relationships (Ring and Van de Ven, 1994; 93). In fact, trust in, or at least self-confidence in the presence of, agents may be stronger than that in avatars. In a study reported by Blascovitch and Bailenson, users were asked to perform easy and hard tasks in front of no audience, in front of an audience of agents, and in front of an audience of avatars. The participants performed equally well at the easy tasks in all three circumstances, but on hard tasks they performed significantly worse when performing in front of avatars. The conclusion was that the agents were not seen to be judging the performance, whereas the avatars were, and this inhibited the participants’ performance (Blascovitch and Bailenson, 2011; 92).

These factors influencing the relationship between humans and agents is not simply a function of the behaviour of the avatar, however, as individual differences between participants also have a bearing on this interaction. Bayne (2008: 204) notes the differing degrees to which uncanniness affects students, and no matter where the design of the agent falls on the Uncanny Valley curve, some participants will always report feelings of unease at the thought of communicating with an artificial intelligence (Gemma Tombs, personal correspondence). For others, the relationship they have with the agent may not differ substantially from that they have with humans; Morgan and Morgan, (2007; 334) report the statements of Reeves and Nass that “suggest that participants respond to computers socially, or in ways that are similar to their responses to other humans” and Kiesler that people “keep promises to computer in the same way that they do to real life human beings”, and as stated above, some will actually feel more confident in the presence of agents than in front of humans.

In a final addition to the complexity in human-agent compared to human-avatar relationships, participants also differ in their tendency, or even their ability, to determine whether a character’s agency is human, or artificial in its origin; characteristics which has been referred to as a turing tendency and a turing ability (Childs, 2010; 72). The Turing test was first proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 (Donath, 2000; 300) as a means to determine whether an artificial intelligence was thinking as a human. The essential element of the test was that a person would communicate through text with either a person or a computer, and if it was not possible to distinguish between the two, then the computer could be displaying intelligence. In some studies, agents taking part in online conversations have successfully mimicked human behaviour sufficiently to pass as human for a short while (Murray, 1997; 219-226, Donath, 2000; 302). Some participants, however, may make an inaccurate categorisation in the other direction. In a study reported by Slater and Steed (2002, 153) a participant:

“Formed the belief that the cartoon-like avatars were not embodying real people but were “robots”, and as a result she cut down her communication with them. It was only when they laughed (“something a robot cannot do”) that she believed they were real.”

In the studies by Newman (2007; 98) in which participants were asked to converse with a teddy bear named Albert (actually Newman’s research assistant) through a variety of media, several of the participants assumed that they were interacting with a non-player character in a game and “registered surprise when they realised that Albert was responding to them with human intelligence” (Newman, 2007; 98).

 From reading the transcripts of these interactions it seems that participants were employing a form of Turing test, to varying degrees of accuracy, i.e. have a high turing tendency, but low turing ability.

That’s as far as I got, but I’d be interested to hear your responses — do you ture? And how good are you at it?

References

Bayne, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds, ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2008, 197–205

Blascovitch, J. and Bailenson, J. (2011) Infinite Reality, HarperCollins: New York

Childs, M. (2010) Learners’ Experiences of Presence in Virtual Worlds, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, http://go.warwick.ac.uk/ep-edrfap/

Donath, J. (2000) Being Real; Questions of Tele-Identity, in Goldberg, K. (ed.) The Robot in the Garden; Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet (296 – 311) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Draude, C. (2011) Intermediaries: reflections on virtual humans, gender, and the Uncanny Valley, AI & Soc (2011) 26:319–327

Kaptein, M., Markopoulos, P., de Ruyter, B, and Aarts, E. (2011) Two acts of social intelligence: the effects of mimicry and social praise on the evaluation of an artificial agent, AI & Soc (2011) 26:261–273

Morgan, K. and Morgan, M. (2007) The Challenges of Gender, Age and Personality in E-Learning, in R. Andrews and C. Haythornthwaite, (Eds.) The SAGE Handbook of E-learning Research, UK: London, Sage, 328-346

Murray, J.H. (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, New York: The Free Press

Newman, K. (2007) PhD Thesis, An Investigation of Narrative and Role-playing Activities in Online Communication Environments, Griffith University, Queensland

Nowak, K.L. and Biocca, F. (2003) The Effect of the Agency and Anthropomorphism on Users’ Sense of Telepresence, Copresence, and Social Presence in Virtual Environments, Presence, Vol. 12, No. 5, October 2003, 481–494

Ring, P.S and Van de Ven, A.H. (1994) ‘Developmental processes of cooperative interorganizational relationships’, Academy of Management Review, 19 (1): 90-118

Slater, M. and Steed, A. (2002) Meeting People Virtually: Experiments in Shared Virtual Environments, in Schroeder, R. The Social Life of Avatars, Springer-Verlag London

There have been a few blog entries I’ve read recently about the Stop Funding Hate campaign decrying the campaign’s success with Lego withdrawing its promotions from the Daily Mail. Here’s one http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/stop-funding-hate-nasty-elitist-campaign-press-censorship/

Here’s another http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2016/news/deputy-editor-attacks-stop-funding-hate-supporters-hypocrisy/

And a third http://www.bruceonpolitics.com/2016/11/13/stop-funding-hate-fascists/

There are two problems with the arguments against what the SFH campaign is doing.

The first is; they’re not limiting free speech. They’re merely using the tools that created a platform for the Daily Mail and Express against them.

There are no left wing mass media outlets. By the nature of mass media, it requires massive funding to achieve. People with lots of money tend to be right wing, because of course they’d be OK with the system as it is, it’s the one in which they’ve become successful, and it’s not in their interest therefore to change it. Some may have made their money by luck, or intelligence, or a combination of both, but the largest corporations make their money because the capitalist system works for them.

Newspapers have a ludicrous business model. They only survive because of advertising. When I was at journalism school (89 – 92) I wasn’t very motivated by the newspaper side of things because I assumed with the Internet they wouldn’t be around much longer. I’d not accounted for the inertia that culture and big business together can provide. They’re not driven by audiences therefore, they’re driven by advertisers, hence big business, hence right wing.

For the average person to influence their direction therefore, it can’t be done by not buying them. People are already not buying them. They can only influence them by not buying stuff from their advertisers.

But nobody’s stopping them from saying what they want. There’s the normal social media avenue that everyone else who’s not supported by massive corporate investment has. Anyone who works for a newspaper is still free to use that. There’s no suppression involved, just an effort to limit the unfair advantage. So likening the process to book burning is ridiculous.

The second flaw in the argument is that none of the stuff I’ve read from those who are supporting the campaign argues that newspapers shouldn’t express a different political position if they want. Any well-argued, accurate and evidenced account from a different perspective is fine.

It’s poorly-argued, inaccurate and evidenceless positions that are what they’re objecting to. The failure of mass media to actually stick to the truth is a given, the Mail never has after all. From an educational perspective though, and looking at things like “graduateness”, educating a population to insist on the truth should be one of our aims. If not our chief aim. And from that perspective seeing people demanding it, and a big business acceding to the need for it before they will invest in something, is reassuring that in some areas at least, things are moving in the right direction.

To say something is “true” is of course could be falling to the trap of assuming there is such a thing as independent objective reality. Of course there isn’t. The word “is” should only ever be used as a short-hand for “according to the best interpretation of the available evidence”. Since doing my astrophysics degree we’ve gone from “the rate of the universe expansion is slowing” to “the rate of the universe expansion is increasing”. The first of those things was true in the 80s, the second of those is currently true. Any fact is only tentatively held.

That doesn’t mean though that the truth is completely up for grabs and that any statement is valid because no-one really knows. I’ve been increasingly surprised by the discussions in the Horizon 2020 groups on LinkedIn where there are a lot of statements denouncing scientific arrogance, that science is perceived as the only route to knowledge. If you think that testing, evidence, argument, and selecting the best explanation from those presented by that process isn’t the only way to come up with a viewpoint, then stay the fuck away from research. And stay the fuck away from education too. Because you are a waste of oxygen. And far too dangerous to be around learners.

We’ve seen one huge problem with this lack of insistence on evidence with the Trump candidacy. Politifact http://www.politifact.com/ ought to be one of the most influential sites in politics, because if someone’s making stuff up, it should really count against them. But then there’s this http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/ Which everyone voting knew really, but not enough people thought mattered.

So – the conclusion is, in academia, in teaching, we have to loudly and immediately call bullshit whenever it arises, not fall prey to considerations of all viewpoints being valid. It’s the best defence against intellectual dishonesty and fraudulent behaviour. And also that wishy-washy poverty of thinking exemplified by Tim Minchin in Storm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U or Sokal and Bricmont in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense. But defend freedom of speech whenever possible too. Those two things are not incompatible at all.

Other comparison websites are available

I’m using the image of Maiya as she’s a schoolteacher meerkat (and ex-secret agent but that’s another story). The point is that meerkats have been found to teach their offspring. They create a sandpit and incrementally teach little meerkats to kill scorpions. They first put a dead scorpion in the pit, and once the young meerkat pup can deal with that, they’ll put a live scorpion in there with its sting removed, and if they can kill the scorpion they’ll then put one in with its sting intact. Once they can kill that the pup has graduated from scorpion academy.

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/wild-meerkats-school-their-young

Basically all the elements of learning design are in there: there’s cognitive apprenticeship, experiential learning, zone of proximal development, learning pathway, teacher intervention, assessment, and peer support (other meerkits are watching). The students have their tools (OK claws) to attack the scorpion with. And if occasionally a scorpion kills a meerkit, well that just means your retention rates take a hit.

There’s no way to tell if any of our ancestors applied similar techniques, but assuming they did, it means we probably perfected learning design 10s of millions of years ago.

If anything all we’ve added are the ability to do teaching at a larger scale (lecture halls and MOOCs) so more economically, and add a metacognitive element (learners identify their own learning needs, they learn how to apply their skills to new challenges, like killing invasive species) so more flexibility. But that’s about it.

So what do we need educational research for?

Well for one, it’s good to know why it works, even if that’s just a matter of coming up with a name for things. But in a period of rapid technological change, there’s the fact that the sandpit changes, and the scorpions. All the time. But the claws get an update too. Technological changes and social change also mean that the only way to ensure your pups are always going to be able to adapt to those changes is by teaching them how to continue learning.

The scorpion/sandpit thing came to mind this week because I was at the Telford Schools Conference http://www.telfordeducationshowcase.co.uk/. I was talking about Educational Social Media, and I’ve been presenting stuff on this for schools since Coventry in 2009 where I held a workshop titled “Wikis and twitters and blogs? Oh my!” Is web 2.0 a road schools should be going down?

The answer then was a bit equivocal. This time though there was no difficulty selling the concept to the teachers. In fact a good proportion of them had already used some form of social media in their teaching. The barrier now is the institutions. There is a reticence to allow children to access their mobile phones in school, in case it leads to them using them all the time, and outside the class there’s still not a guarantee children will have access to the technology. Some schools are on systems that block access to twitter.

The fear is that social media are such a can of worms that introducing them is just asking for trouble. And since a lot of social media only allow registration if you’re above a certain age, often the children don’t want to admit to being on it.

The thing is, there really are some problems with social media usage. There’s exposure, by making social activities public, there’s stalking and cyberbullying and loads of other ways of being stung. Like sex ed classes, it’s a good idea to raise the ideas early, before there’s a chance of the damage occurring. And doing that in a safe sandpit like social media in a closed school system seems like a good idea. If bullying and inappropriate posts do occur, then the negative way of looking at this is that the school has facilitated this by putting up the social media system in the first place, but the positive response is to look at it as a teaching opportunity, to provide children with an opportunity to see why it’s wrong.

Unfortunately, although schools are now on board with this as a concept, it looks like local authorities are still shying away from it. Many actually ban teachers from being on FB for example. For them social media are just too dangerous to play with. Which is a bit of a step back from where the meerkats are at. At least they acknowledge they have a responsibility to teach their pups about the stuff that can sting you.