Call for Papers
From C-3PO to HAL: Opening the Discourse about the Dark Side of Multi-Modal Social Agents
A hybrid workshop at the ACM Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) 2023 conference
July 19, 2023 at 13:00 – 17:00 (UTC+2)
Eindhoven, The Netherlands and online
Workshop: https://www.digital-media-lab.uni-bremen.de/multimodaldarkpatterns
CUI 2023: https://www.conversationaluserinterfaces.org/2023/
Submission deadline: June 2, 2023
Overview:
Communicative bots such as voice assistants, social (ro-)bots, and taskbots are increasingly becoming part of everyday life, with work showing how we integrate these agents in our daily routines while creating emotional bonds with them. As these artificial agents grow in numbers and level of sophistication, so does the number of questions relating to human-agent communication. In particular, these agents raise the question: how do humans relate to artificial entities that are awarded the position of social agent? We aim to address this question in this workshop by focusing on three related questions. First, we ask: how can we identify malicious design strategies – often called dark patterns – in social agents? Secondly: what is the necessity for and the effects of anthropomorphic features, across different modalities and social contexts, in social agents? And lastly: how can we incorporate the findings of the first two questions into the design of social agents?
Details:
How much should communicative and social agents disclose that they are not human while their features mislead us to think otherwise? Recent technological advances, including generative AI that produces human-like language, speech syntheses, and realistic visuals, widen the scope of possibilities to create human-computer interactions that may be impossible to distinguish from human-human interaction in specific environments. Meanwhile, scholars of the HCI community have increasingly focused on malicious design strategies, producing a growing list of so-called dark patterns. However, this discourse has primarily been set on screen-based interactions. Considering the availability of technologies and the prevalence of social agents, which, in the wrong hands, can be used in similarly malicious manners, requires special awareness among stakeholders regarding the protection of users.
This half-day hybrid workshop will kick off this discourse by inviting participants from academia and industry to reflect on these technologies. We will carry over the ongoing discourse of dark patterns to social agents and conversational user interfaces and consider the need for design guidelines and regulations to ensure users’ safety.
Applicants are invited to submit position papers of 3-5 pages in length (ACM single-column format including references) to present their related research findings, novel ideas, and work-in-progress. Submissions will be reviewed by at least two workshop organizers and admitted based on their quality, relevance to the topic, and diversity. For each submission, at least one author must attend the workshop. Key details can be found below:
KEY DATES:
Submission Deadline: 2nd of June, 2023 AoE
Notification of Acceptance: 14th of June, 2023 AoE
Workshop date: 19th of July, 13:00 pm – 17:00 pm (UTC+2)
VENUE:
This workshop is co-located with the 2023 ACM International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI 2023). Both the conference and the workshop are to be held in a hybrid format. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings.
ORGANISING COMMITTEE:
Vino Avanesi, University of Bremen
Johanna Rockstroh, University of Bremen
Thomas Mildner, University of Bremen
Nima Zargham, University of Bremen
Leon Reicherts, University College London
Maximilian A. Friehs, University of Twente
Dimosthenis Kontogiorgos, Humboldt University of Berlin
Nina Wenig, University of Bremen
Rainer Malaka, University of Bremen