Bots against Bias: Critical Next Steps for Human-Robot Interaction
This work tackles bias in human-robot interaction for researchers and practitioners, but it is incremental as it reviews existing cases and proposes next steps without introducing new methods.
The chapter addresses the problem of bias in humanoid and expressive social robots, exploring its origins and proposing solutions through bias-conscious design and robots that help tackle human bias, with a focus on social, legal, and ethical factors.
We humans are biased - and our robotic creations are biased, too. Bias is a natural phenomenon that drives our perceptions and behavior, including when it comes to socially expressive robots that have humanlike features. Recognizing that we embed bias, knowingly or not, within the design of such robots is crucial to studying its implications for people in modern societies. In this chapter, I consider the multifaceted question of bias in the context of humanoid, AI-enabled, and expressive social robots: Where does bias arise, what does it look like, and what can (or should) we do about it. I offer observations on human-robot interaction (HRI) along two parallel tracks: (1) robots designed in bias-conscious ways and (2) robots that may help us tackle bias in the human world. I outline a curated selection of cases for each track drawn from the latest HRI research and positioned against social, legal, and ethical factors. I also propose a set of critical next steps to tackle the challenges and opportunities on bias within HRI research and practice.