I thought I posted this yesterday!

Discussion of Conversational Agents

Like many of my fellow teachers, no doubt, I am mildly horrified but remain unsurprised by the nature of interaction between various students and Joan, the conversational agent. While we like to think that most of our students are like us – that is, value knowledge, intellect, and education – I think it’s important to remember that the average human being will very often get away with whatever he or she can. I think it’s also important to remember that our teacher-student relationships, be they in person, online or some combination thereof, are based upon the human interaction of learner and instructor. As a high school teacher, I am told incessantly that the most important factor for a successful student is his or her relationship with the teacher. Interpersonal relationships are the lynch-pin of education. A student might feign respect for a teacher based upon the teacher’s authority; a student respects a teacher for his or her character. Nowhere in this equation will you notice a respect for knowledge of subject material (although I add the disclaimer that if a teacher does not know his material, he may certainly lose the students’ respect; that does not mean that simply knowing the material makes students respect you). So how can we expect students to interact respectfully with an artificial construct which simply imparts information, and lacks human anima?

The truth of this strange phenomena surrounding conversational agents is that human beings often act as pack animals, working to establish their place as either dominant or subservient to those around them. Since Joan held no authority, nor would any authority figure inflict punishment for inappropriate conversation, the students’ interactions quickly devolved into degradation and profanity.

I find it also sociologically and psychologically significant that so many of the comments were sexual, and would be considered sexual harassment if addressed to a human female. I have little doubt that if the CA were male that many students would quickly have accused him of being homosexual, and made inappropriate comments to that effect. Domination and sexual degradation are often psychologically intertwined.

All this being said, in the end I don’t think it’s really anything significant. The average adolescent has a clear understanding what is appropriate interaction with another human being, and what is “fantasy” within a simulated human interaction. In spite of much of the hysteria surrounding violence associated with video games and television, the average adolescent understands that what they see on TV is often not acceptable in real life. In spite of the fact that we have all seen the Death Star explode dozens of times in the Star Wars films, we remained horrified on 9-11-01. Video game players who kill dozens in Grand Theft Auto do not (by and large) go on murderous car-jacking sprees. The average high school student, when faced with a conversational agent, is much more likely to treat the agent like a video game character than an actual human.

And since the CA is also a proxy for a teacher, the students might want to establish their dominance over the symbolic manifestation of the people who spend hours each day giving those students orders.