Hello everyone,
We are excited to host our fourth Monthly Memeber Conversation. This month's speaker will be Dr. Andres Rosero. Andres is a recent graduate from the Human Factors & Applied Cognition program at George Mason University. Andres's research has focuses on examining how humans perceive robots and autonomous agents in complex and morally ambiguous situations. Andres hopes to help in understanding how robots can be best employed in social spaces to maximize the potential for positive interactions with humans and promote positive human-machine team efforts.
Talk Time: Friday, April 24, 1:00 PM (ET)
Talk Title: Examining the Power of Justifications in Moral HRI
Abstract: As robots transition from mere tools into social teammates, they will increasingly encounter moral dilemmas where social norms conflict, making it inevitable that they will violate a norm to resolve the situation. This research investigates the power of justifications as a specialized trust repair strategy. Across multiple experiments involving over 3,500 participants, we utilized narrative vignettes to evaluate how justifications affect human perception.
The findings demonstrate that justifications are significantly more effective than causal explanations at mitigating moral blame and recovering trustworthiness. Critically, this repair effect persists even when the human observer is in direct moral disagreement with the robot's decision. The study concludes that humans can distinguish between a specific blameworthy action and a robot's general competence as a decision-maker, provided the robot transparently communicates the underlying values that guided its choice. Ultimately, integrating norm-based justifications is presented as a fundamental requirement for the successful assimilation of autonomous agents into human communities.
This is meant to be an informal space to connect and have real conversations with like-minded folks interested in all things HART.
If you're interested, please email me at alsaid@umich.edu.
Hope to see many of you there.
- Areen
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Areen Alsaid
Assistant Professor
Dearborn MI
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