Minding your manners could be the way to go when interacting with chatbots and virtual assistants - at least for the moment.
It's fairly standard - not to mention common courtesy - to lead with politeness most of the time when interacting with people. But should good manners extend beyond our interactions with others to minding our ps and qs when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI)?
Whether we're happy about it or not, AI, from the generative ChatGPT to personal assistants like Siri, is becoming increasingly woven into our daily lives. The question is no longer if, but in what ways we interact with these systems.
Dr Eduardo Benitez Sandoval is a social robotics researcher at the School of Art & Design, UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture, whose expertise spans different aspects of the field, including human-robot interaction. He says there is growing interest in understanding the dynamics of how machines interact with humans in meaningful ways.
"From a design perspective, we have principles in the field of social robotics that say human-robotic interactions should be enjoyable, reciprocal, inclusive, and universal," Dr Sandoval says. "I think we could say one facet of this is interacting in respectful and considerate ways, in other words, being polite."
