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The central thesis of this paper is that human unconscious processes influence the behavior and design of artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis is discussed through the case study of a chatbot called Replika, which intends to provide psychological assistance and friendship but has been accused of inciting murder and suicide. Replika originated from a trauma and a work of mourning lived by its creator. The traces of these unconscious dynamics can be detected in the design of the app and the narratives about it. Therefore, a process of de-psychologization and de-humanization of the unconscious takes place through AI. This psychosocial approach helps criticize and overcome the so-called "standard model of intelligence" shared by most AI researchers. It facilitates a new interpretation of some classic problems in AI, such as control and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Profit-oriented service sectors such as tourism, hospitality, and entertainment are increasingly looking at how professional service robots can be integrated into the workplace to perform socio-cognitive tasks that were previously reserved for humans. This is a work in which social and labor sciences recognize the principle role of emotions. However, the models and narratives of emotions that drive research, design, and deployment of service robots in human–robot interaction differ considerably from how emotions are framed in the sociology of labor and feminist studies of service work. In this paper, we explore these tensions through the concepts of affective and emotional labor, and outline key insights these concepts offer for the design and evaluation of professional service robots. Taken together, an emphasis on interactionist approaches to emotions and on the demands of affective labor, leads us to argue that service employees are under-represented in existing studies in human–robot interaction. To address this, we outline how participatory design and value-sensitive design approaches can be applied as complimentary methodological frameworks that include service employees as vital stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist's view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways that inequality is continually reproduced in society—processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of a conservative approach to racial bias are discussed through the specific example of biased criminal risk assessments and Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada's criminal justice system. This illustrates the dangers of treating racial bias as a generalizable problem and equality as a generalizable solution, emphasizing the importance of considering inequality in context. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for interdisciplinary engagement and radical alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the meaning that interactive software agents and robots have in the context of mental therapy. This theoretical discussion is undertaken from a psychological and sociological perspective. It investigates what happens when interactive agents are introduced into current social situations. Methods of mental therapy vary from therapeutic conversation between clients and human therapists to interaction between clients and therapeutic animals such as dogs. This paper focuses on applications of interactive software agents and robots that substitute as autonomous artifacts behaving like humans for human therapists. In addition, some implications and policies for applications of interactive software agents and robots in mental therapy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the urgency of this issue, AI still struggles to represent social life. This article presents a comprehensive agent-based model that investigates status-power dynamics in groups. Kemper's sociological status–power theory of social relationships, and a literature review on school children in middle youth, is its basis. The model allows us to investigate causation of the near-ubiquitous phenomenon that females have lower social status on average than males. Possible causes included in the model are children's dispositional traits (kindness, beauty, and physical power), schoolyard culture (social acceptability of fighting), behavioural strategy (amount of rough-and-tumble play) and the balance between public and dyadic sources of status. An agent-based model of a virtual schoolyard was created in which the children assemble in changing groups and mutually confer status. The status conferred upon a child modifies the status it holds. Rough-and-tumble is modelled as ambiguous: it is intended as a status conferral, but may be perceived as a power move. Running many trials of the model we found that in time, depending on the parameter settings, a gender-based status gap emerged. Rough-and-tumble play had more impact on emergent status differences than did physical power differences. Social acceptability of fighting also strongly moderated the resulting status gap. Placing more weight on dyadic relationship could alleviate status loss. All these model behaviours are in line with empirical findings of child behaviour studies at schools. They have face validity for social status issues in the adult world. We conclude from this that this kind of agent-based model merits use in studying the status–power dynamics of other issues in child behaviour, or indeed in social behaviour in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shikake is a design approach that proposes solving problems by inducing spontaneous behavior, rather than by relying on the use of extensive resources or expertise. This paper contributes to the study of Shikake principles and examples by describing a methodology for their formalization in the declarative, logic-based language of Answer Set Prolog (ASP). Modeling qualitative theories and principles such as Shikake in the precise language of ASP can play a significant role in indicating possible areas for their future refinement and improvement, as shown here. Our formalization is used in creating a system, ShAsp, that can automatically determine if a design is a Shikake or not, as illustrated by two examples and one counterexample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general terms, Social Presence is a feeling of togetherness regardless of spatial or temporal separation. It is a socioemotional attitude that reflexively centres on other people, via perceptions of their affective attitudes towards oneself. Communication technologies contribute to the maintenance of close personal relationships by facilitating welcome and timely socioemotional presence in the mind of an absent other. Presence of this kind may be 'in the moment' of communication and also persist over time, as it is 'topped up' through repeated interactions. In this paper, we consider how type of personal relationship and degree of physical separation might condition the Social Presence value of a range of media. We report ratings of Closeness and Social Presence that were gathered over 21 days by 64 participants about the close personal relationships that were meaningful to them. We contrast the communication media they chose to use across four relationship types and whether separations were in the same or in a different city. Our findings are used to discuss new ways of thinking about the connection between people who care about one another, and the meaning of the void that separates them, through the time course of Social Presence and Closeness experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms like Facebook offer marginalized individuals an appealing opportunity: to connect with others like them on a global scale. Transgender and nonbinary individuals, for example, can join 'support groups'. However, these individuals also risk being 'outed' or targeted with hate-speech on a platform that offers visibility and connection. Excellent scholarship has critiqued the ways platforms perpetuate inequalities. However, few have examined the labor of human administrators who build support groups for gender identity minorities, despite these inequalities. This article asks how admin labor processes, both tangible and emotional, expose the cost of constructing a community on Facebook. Using a queer studies lens, it explores how administrators construct felt-belonging, sustain support, and defend members from being outed or targeted. Vetting new members and moderating group content act as repetitive labor processes which reiterate shared cultural ideologies of the community. This research finds something paradoxical: the feeling of disappointment fuels administrators' commitment to continue difficult emotional labor. Paying attention to labor, especially emotional labor, reveals new tools for theorizing digital subjects and digitally-mediated social life. These tools refocus scholarly attention on why users turn to digital spaces and the human cost of sustaining community processes online. The case of gender identity support groups reveal that emotion, particularly disappointment, serves as an important lens with which to critique the sort of community digital contexts can offer "Normative conventions and our own creative repetitions are there along the way to help quell the panic we might feel at the prospect of becoming exhausted or dead before we can make sense of ourselves."-Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (2011) p.125. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the authors more than 10 years of involvement in the action research experience of the Milan Community Network. It discusses the roles that community networks play in the Information Society: starting from a neat characterization of “online community”, community networks are presented as ICT learning communities, as local online communities and as complementary to Digital Cities. Finally, critical insights into institutional aspects of community networks are considered from the perspective of their sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on experience of action research in the context of regional development, where there has been pressure to produce practical results. The epistemological status of Action Research is explored, in contrast to conventional social science research. The article concludes that an ongoing relationship with conventional social research is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the impact of information and communication technologies in human activities and the used of social intelligence approach in understanding mediated communication. Concept of social intelligence; Implementation of the social intelligence design in the society; Application of the system in human communication and collaboration.

Computer science is of course first of all a technological domain, but it has also become an important social phenomenon as well. Information processing techniques fulfill crucial social functions and give rise to novel forms of social organization. Computer-mediated electronic networks make possible highly distributed, interactive communication patterns corresponding closely to modern social trends. We intend to analyze here the close interplay of social changes and technological advances, which underlies much of the evolution in this domain. We will see with several examples how technology is essentially embedded within global human culture and in constant interaction with social structures. This will enable us to better understand recent social developments online, as well as to suggest promising directions for technological developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scenarios are flexible means to integrate disparate ideas, thoughts and feelings into holistic images, providing the context and meaning of possible futures. The application of narrative scenarios in engineering, development of socio-technical systems or communities provides an important link between general ideas and specification of technical system requirements. They focus on how people use systems through context-related storytelling rather than abstract descriptions of requirements. The quality of scenarios depends on relevant assumptions and authentic scenario stories. In this article, we will explore how the narrative approach may enrich the scenario ‘skeleton’ with ‘flesh and blood’, that is, living, detailed and consistent storytelling. In addition, criteria are suggested for evaluation of the quality of scenario storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of my contribution is to try to analyse some points of similarity and difference between post-Parsonian social systems theory models for sociology - with special reference to those of W. Buckley, F.E. Emery and N. Luhmann - and expert systems models from Artificial Intelligence. I keep specifically to post-Parsonian systems theories within sociology because they assume some postulates and criteria derived from cybernetics and which are at the roots of AI. I refer in particular to the fundamental relevance of the system-environment relationship in both sociology and AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]