Just like human opponents, robots can get on our nerves while playing video games.
Aaron Roth of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues found that the language a robot opponent used during a competitive game affected how well people played. Negative comments from the robot caused humans to play less rationally.
The researchers used a humanoid robot developed by SoftBank Robotics. It is equipped with cameras and microphones and can speak and move.
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Forty people were asked to play a game called Guards and Treasures on a tablet mounted in front of the robot. The aim of the game is to choose to attack one of several gates, which the opponent counters by placing guards there to defend it.
Each person played two practice rounds against the computer without the robot, and then 35 rounds of the game with the robot present.
For half of the participants, the robot made encouraging remarks, and for the other half, it said discouraging things – for example, “I have to say you are a great player” and “Honestly this game is a wonderful experience” or “I have to say you are a terrible player” and “Honestly this game is a bad experience”.
What the robot said was unrelated to the player’s actual performance.
The researchers analysed how well people played using a model known as quantal response, which measures how close to optimal a person’s decisions are.
Those who heard discouraging comments played less rationally, with a score of 0.51, compared with the positive group, who scored 0.58 on average. The higher the score, the more rational the decisions made.
Unsurprisingly, the group who received discouraging remarks also disliked the robot more and enjoyed the game less.
These participants expressed frustration about the robot’s comments, says Roth. “It kept making me doubt myself,” said one participant. “I don’t like some of the stuff it was saying. But that’s the way it was programmed so I can’t blame it,” said another.
“Already we see robots present in more and more situations in our daily lives,” says Roth. How robots affect humans is going to be a big issue in the future, particularly if they are imbued with emotion or nuanced behaviour, he says.
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