# Presentation: 463657

## Can Machines Be Polite?

**Michael A. Covington**
**Artificial Intelligence Center**

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**Machines have been *****annoying people***** ever since human-machine interaction became nontrivial.**

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**“****Our software-based products **
**    ****irritate us *****because they aren’t polite*****, **
**    ****not because they lack features.”**
**	****	****	**
**	****	****- Alan Cooper**
**	****	****   ****Inventor of Visual Basic**
***	******	******   ******The Inmates are Running the Asylum***

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

-    The study of **politeness in human language**
-    can tell us something about how to make
**   ****machines easier to work with.**

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**Preliminaries**
**Theory of politeness**
**A rogues’ gallery of impolite machine behaviors**
**Conclusions**

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**Preliminaries**
**Theory of politeness**
**A rogues’ gallery of impolite machine behaviors**
**Conclusions**

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

-    Preliminary #1:
-    Politeness is **more than skin deep.**

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

-    Politeness is **more than skin deep.**
**   ****Peppering an impolite interaction**
**   ****with politeness markers**
-    just makes it more annoying.

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

- “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t understand.
-      Please repeat your most recent request.”

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

- “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t understand.
-      Please repeat your most recent request.”
- “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t understand.
-      Please repeat your most recent request.”
- “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t understand.
-      Please repeat your most recent request.”
- “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t understand.
-      Please repeat your most recent request.”

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

- Preliminary #2:
- The inanimate world is **inherently not polite**; it does nothing to accommodate humans.
- Many of us **like matching wits with inanimate matter** and have become engineers.

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

- On the other hand...
- Some people are **very put off** by a machine that **detects their errors** (and is right!).
- That’s why some people **hate computers.**

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

- Seeing the computer as **conscious**
- (verbal) is what triggers the hate.
- The more humanlike a machine is,
- the ruder it can be.

## Preliminaries

**Preliminaries**

- The lesson?
- Machines should not pretend to be more humanlike than they really are.

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**Preliminaries**
**Theory of politeness**
**A rogues’ gallery of impolite machine behaviors**
**Conclusions**

## Theory of politeness

**Theory of politeness**

- J. L. Austin (1962):
-     **Locution**		What you say
- ≠ **Illocution ** 		What you mean
- ≠ **Perlocution**		How the hearer takes it
- The hearer has to decide how to understand you.

## Theory of politeness

**Theory of politeness**

- H. P. Grice (1975):
**Conversation is a cooperative activity,**
- often in support of other cooperative activities,
- and has its own rules (“maxims”) of cooperation.

## Theory of politeness

**Theory of politeness**

- Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987, condensed):
**Positive politeness** (what to do):
- 	Enlist hearer’s cooperation.
- 	Find common ground.
**Negative politeness **(what to avoid):
- 	Do not presume hearer’s willingness (or attention).
- 	Do not coerce (control) the hearer.
- 	Do not require hearer to make effort to understand.

## Theory of politeness

**Theory of politeness**

- Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987, condensed):
**Positive politeness** (what to do):
- 	Enlist hearer’s cooperation.
- 	Find common ground.
**Negative politeness **(what to avoid):
- 	Do not presume hearer’s willingness (or attention).
- 	Do not coerce (control) the hearer.
- 	Do not require speaker to make effort to understand.

**GRANTED:**
**Human has already**
**chosen to use**
**computer as a tool.**

## Theory of politeness

**Theory of politeness**

- Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987):
**Positive politeness** (what to do):
- 	Enlist hearer’s cooperation.
- 	Find common ground.
**Negative politeness **(what to avoid):
- 	Do not presume hearer’s willingness (or attention).
- 	Do not coerce (control) the hearer.
- 	Do not require speaker to make effort to understand.

**IMPORTANT PART:**
**Computer must not be a pest.**

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**Preliminaries**
**Theory of politeness**
**A rogues’ gallery of impolite machine behaviors**
**Conclusions**

## Rogues’ gallery

**Rogues’ gallery**

**Demands for attention**
**Demands for control**
**Demands for effort**

## Rogues’ gallery

**Rogues’ gallery**

**Demands for attention**
**Demands for control**
**Demands for effort**

## Demands for attention

**Demands for attention**

**Demanding more attention than appropriate; treating a triviality like an emergency.**
**“****Attention!  An update of BozoPlayer is available NOW!  Get it RIGHT NOW!”**

## Demands for attention

**Demands for attention**

**Indicating a state change by repeated demands for attention, as if it were a series of events.**
**“****Bzzzzzzt!” every 2 minutes from the clothes dryer when it’s doing its final 20-minute tumble.**

## Demands for attention

**Demands for attention**

**Acquiring attention and failing to acknowledge it through progress indicators.**
**A common problem, especially in scientific software.  Developers have super-fast machines and networks; the rest of us don’t.**

## Rogues’ gallery

**Rogues’ gallery**

**Demands for attention**
**Demands for control**
**Demands for effort**

## Demands for control

**Demands for control**

**Stepping the user through a script rather than letting the user control the machine.**
**Filling out a form is *****much***** better than answering questions one-by-one.**
**In a “wizard,” user should be able to go back as well as forward.**

## Demands for control

**Demands for control**

**Setting up an unnecessary roadblock before the user can proceed.**
**“****You must insert the CD before installing the network card... You must install the network card midway through the program on the CD.”**

## Demands for control

**Demands for control**

**Not letting the user cancel a time-consuming operation.**
**Common problem with disk and network operations.  Computer *****insists***** on waiting the full time-out period even if you could have told it that the disk or net is no longer there.**

## Demands for control

**Demands for control**

**Falsely claiming to be ready.**
**When booting, Windows XP switches from hourglass to arrow *****before***** it is actually ready to respond.**

## Demands for control

**Demands for control**

**Falsely claiming to be ready.**
**In Windows programming, switching to the hourglass cursor is up to the programmer. **
**Why can’t the OS put up the hourglass whenever a program isn’t listening for input?**

## Rogues’ gallery

**Rogues’ gallery**

**Demands for attention**
**Demands for control**
**Demands for effort**

## Demands for effort

**Demands for effort**

**Making the user work hard (or even use external information sources) to decipher a message.**
**“****Error 1221.  List index out of bounds (2).”  (in a mail-reading program)**

## Demands for effort

**Demands for effort**

**Making the user do computations or database chores. **
**For decades, U. of Georgia students had to look up building numbers manually to interpret their computer-printed class schedules.**
***I thought we had a COMPUTER here!***

## Demands for effort

**Demands for effort**

**Making the user do menial work. **
**“****Press 1 for sales, 2 for support...**
**	****press 1 for cameras, 2 for printers...**
**	****press 1 for inkjets, 2 for lasers...”**
***Are we doing a binary search of the entire universe???***

## Demands for effort

**Demands for effort**

**Throwing away the fruit of the user’s labor. **
**If you accidentally press 3 instead of 2 during that binary search, you may have to hang up and start over.**

## Demands for effort

**Demands for effort**

**Throwing away the fruit of the user’s labor. **
**If you make a mistake on a web form, the whole form may come up *****blank***** when you go back one step.**

## Can machines be polite?

**Can machines be polite?**

**Preliminaries**
**Theory of politeness**
**A rogues’ gallery of impolite machine behaviors**
**Conclusions**

## Conclusions

**Conclusions**

-    **Computers (and other machines) **
**   ****can be real pests!**
**   ****The study of human-language politeness**
**   ****can help us analyze the problem.**

## Conclusions

**Conclusions**

**Now what do we *****do***** about the problem?**
**Make programmers and machine designers aware of the user’s experience.**
**Classify examples of impoliteness so programmers, designers, and testers can be forewarned.**

## Conclusions

**Conclusions**

**Now what do we *****do***** about the problem?**
**Consider impolite behavior as **
***	******a kind of “bug” to be hunted down ***
**	****and eliminated during testing, ****	**
**	****as well as **
**	****to be prevented by good design.**

## ?

**?**