Interacting Socially with Artificial Intelligence: Learning to Code, Communicate, and Collaborate with a Smart Robot

Abstract

The rapid emergence of machine learning and various data-driven applications in recent years has engendered an era of artificial intelligence (AI). Consequently, students’ interests in AI and related technologies have also vastly grown. However, the current AI education tends to be too technical for students without engineering backgrounds and too non-theoretical for those without humanities and social sciences backgrounds. This project aims to fill this gap by enabling students to 1) explore theoretical mechanisms underpinning how individuals perceive, respond, and interact with AI technology, 2) discover social, agentic features of the technology that can facilitate more positive interactions and persuasive communication, 3) learn basic concepts and processes of coding, and 4) based on all these, code a robot to respond and behave in desired ways for intended outcomes. Such a combination of theory and practice in the classroom will help students better understand and predict the nature, processes, and outcomes of human-AI interaction and AI-mediated communication.