[2305.09800] Mirages: On Anthropomorphism in Dialogue Systems
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Computer Science > Computation and Language

arXiv:2305.09800 (cs)
[Submitted on 16 May 2023 (v1), last revised 23 Oct 2023 (this version, v2)]

Title:Mirages: On Anthropomorphism in Dialogue Systems

Authors:Gavin Abercrombie, Amanda Cercas Curry, Tanvi Dinkar, Verena Rieser, Zeerak Talat
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Abstract:Automated dialogue or conversational systems are anthropomorphised by developers and personified by users. While a degree of anthropomorphism may be inevitable due to the choice of medium, conscious and unconscious design choices can guide users to personify such systems to varying degrees. Encouraging users to relate to automated systems as if they were human can lead to high risk scenarios caused by over-reliance on their outputs. As a result, natural language processing researchers have investigated the factors that induce personification and develop resources to mitigate such effects. However, these efforts are fragmented, and many aspects of anthropomorphism have yet to be explored. In this paper, we discuss the linguistic factors that contribute to the anthropomorphism of dialogue systems and the harms that can arise, including reinforcing gender stereotypes and notions of acceptable language. We recommend that future efforts towards developing dialogue systems take particular care in their design, development, release, and description; and attend to the many linguistic cues that can elicit personification by users.
Comments: Accepted for publication at EMNLP. See ACL Anthology for published version
Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL)
Cite as: arXiv:2305.09800 [cs.CL]
  (or arXiv:2305.09800v2 [cs.CL] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.09800

Submission history

From: Gavin Abercrombie [view email]
[v1] Tue, 16 May 2023 20:50:46 UTC (7,162 KB)
[v2] Mon, 23 Oct 2023 09:26:22 UTC (7,173 KB)
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