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Michael Braun
Are Autonomous Vehicles The Sentient Robots We Were Promised?
In CHI '18 Workshop: Interacting with Autonomous Vehicles: Learning from other Domains. Montreal, QC, Canada, April 22, 2018. ACM, New York, NY, USA. (bib)

Digital assistants are gaining acceptance in modern life and it is likely that autonomous vehicles in the future will also be controlled with their help. The advantages are plentiful: natural language interaction makes the system more human, automation gives us more time for the important things. But how must these agents and their personalities evolve to give us the perfect user experience? We take a look at current developments in personality-based human-robot interaction and try to widen our focus by looking at how humanoid agents are portrayed in science fiction. These concepts show potentials but also hazards which could come with humanized computers. In our opinion, autonomous vehicles are the predestined breeding grounds for sentient assistants. We however need to ask ourselves what dangers we conjure with them.