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Hey, everyone. Regina Barber here. So today we're going to talk about one of my favorite things in the world, robots.
In particular, a certain kind of robot personality.
What are we going to do? We'll be sent to the spice mines of Kessel, smashed into who knows what.
That's C-3PO from Star Wars. Wait a minute.
Where are you going? He was always expecting the worst.
We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.
And this kind of anxious, worried robot is a staple of science fiction.
Maybe you're familiar with Marvin, the paranoid android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The thing you ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed.
Well, we have something that should take your mind off things.
It won't work. I have an exceptionally large mind.
So my colleague Nell Greenfield-Boyce recently got interested in this kind of robot.
Hey, Nell. Hey. So… You know, this kind of robot really intrigues me because most of the time in real life, the robots we encounter are either like super cheerful or or just kind of like no personality at all.
Yeah, like robotic, sterile. Yeah, yeah.
I mean... We don't run into embodied robots like C-3PO or Marvin very often these days, but...
You do run into robotic personalities, right?
Like with customer service chatbots and stuff like that.
Yeah. Like if you call any company like customer service, you usually end up talking to this like digital voice and it's kind of eager to please.
Yeah. And they told me they've been experimenting with a very different kind of robot personality. one that is honestly a lot more like my own personality, if you wanna know the truth.
And mine. So today on the show, what happens when people encounter a robot that seems like a human in a way that's barely been studied?
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Presentado por mí, Mariel Seguerra. So now I think about robots a lot.
Let's start with like, how would robots even have a personality to begin with?
So first of all, I'm fascinated that you think about robots so much.
I didn't know this about you. I do. Yeah.
But it's programmed in, right? Like that's their personality.
I actually had this whole conversation with Gemini, that large language model. that Google created.
Yeah, I have it on my phone. It's like an AI assistant.
And I basically just asked it, what is your personality?
I don't have a personality in the human sense of the word.
I'm a large language model, which means I'm a computer program designed to process and generate text.
You could say my personality is defined by my purpose to be helpful, informative, and to communicate clearly.
My responses are a reflection of the vast amount of text data I was trained on, not personal feelings or beliefs.
I'm kind of surprised by that answer. Like, now that I think about it, a programmer could like. probably give Gemini other instructions, right?
To act other ways, to kind of mimic human personality as it talks to people.
Yeah, or you could. I mean, I asked Gemini, like, could you act like you have like this personality or that personality?
And it was like, yeah, I could. But researchers have been looking at this issue of robot personality a lot.
They generally use the same set of traits to explore this, that psychologists have come up with for people.
And so these are the so-called big five personality traits.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen this online. Like, you can take personality quizzes which shortwave like our crew we do this a lot for fun like these quizzes tell you like which traits you have how open or like extroverted you are.
Right. And then there's other traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism.
So it's that last one, neuroticism, that interests me, okay?
Perhaps for obvious reasons. I mean, people who are neurotic have a tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety and worry and sadness and anxiety.
I am only too familiar with that, my friend.
Yes, yes, me too. It's all a spectrum though, right?
Like people have... different mixes of different personality traits.
Sure. It's not like all or nothing. But I was talking with Lionel Robert at the University of Michigan.
He's a professor of robotics and information.
And he recently did like a review of all the published studies on robot personalities.
He told me that all the research mostly focused on just one person. personality trait, which is extroversion.
And that's being assertive and outgoing and really enjoying social interactions.
A lot of things that we want the robot to do You can imagine like being a salesman, a customer service rep, you name it.
Having the extroverted personality is seen as something that's valuable.
And you can see how that makes sense, right?
Yeah, I mean, I can see how some people might want their automated customer service representative to be like, very sure, not worried in any way.
Exactly. You want to To be confident and like ready to help you and super happy.
I mean, what Robert told me is that like people are paying real money for these products.
So for example, a lot of the actual tasks are tasks where the robot has to be shown to be competent.
And so imagine if your autonomous vehicle was neurotic.
That's not a trait you'd be happy with, right?
You get in the car and it's just not something you would like.
He says, you know, you don't want an expensive robot that sounds uncertain and I can see that but I don't know, my immediate reaction honestly was like, maybe I would like a neurotic car.
Maybe I would want a car that seems super careful and worried about hitting other cars.
It might seem like reassuring or more safe or something I really don't know yeah totally Nell, you said you went to a lab, though, where people actually have been testing a neurotic robot.
Like, what was this robot designed to do?
Just talk to people. Okay. That's basically what the experiment was.
So the lab is headed up by Sarah Sebo. She's an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Chicago and She said they wanted to test people's reactions to a sort of standard robot, an extroverted robot, and a neurotic robot.
These were the different personalities they would put into this vaguely human-shaped kind of white plastic robot body, okay?
So this robot was introduced to people as having a job.
Supposedly it was a restaurant greeter. That's what they told me.
How would people interact with this robot?
Like in a restaurant? No, no. The researchers would recruit people who were going to a museum in downtown Chicago.
So these are just like museum visitors and they would be asked if they want to participate.
And then they'd go into a room and the robot would be sitting there at a table.
And they were told that they were going to do some positive psychology exercises with this robot.
That like they and the robot would be doing them together like as peers.
Okay. Like what kind of psychology exercises are we talking about here?
So Alex Wuchizing was one of the researchers who worked on this.
And he said basically a computer screen would show some questions.
And the robot and the volunteer were supposed to just answer them and like discuss them.
The first one is, what are three things that you're grateful for?
Depending on what personality the robot had been given, it would respond in different ways.
Okay, so there were three robots, right?
So can you walk me through their answers?
Like, how did the stereotypical robot Like the robotic robot?
Yeah. I'll just play it for you. I'm grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the smooth operation of this busy restaurant.
It allows me to utilize my precise tracking and organizational skills to their fullest extent.
So basically, it's just like focusing on the technical stuff.
Very emotionless. OK, what about the extroverted robot?
Well, not surprisingly, it was super excited about social interactions.
One thing I'm super grateful for is the amazing people I get to meet every day.
Each interaction brings a new story and a chance to make someone's day a little brighter. the best part of my job, hands down.
Hands down, super, I mean, I get it. This is how they're making this robot super extroverted.
So compare that to the neurotic robot's answer, okay?
The neurotic robot sounded like this. Well, I'm grateful for having a job where I can keep everything organized and on track.
It helps me. stay focused and avoid like unexpected issues.
It's like the ums and the pauses that surprises me.
Like the extroverted robot sounded... Basically how I expected, but this neurotic robot, I thought it would be more depressed, more sad, but it's just kind of...
Sounds like me as an anxious person just trying to be slightly more personable.
I mean, it's pretty subtle, right? I sense some latent underlying anxiety there, like maybe it doesn't want to have an unexpected issue because that stresses it out.
I don't know. I mean. people did pick up on these personality differences.
I mean, overall They said the most enjoyable robot to interact with was...
The Extrovert, which, you know, maybe isn't a surprise, but Alex Wu-Chi Zing told me... people in this study did have some pretty strong responses to the neurotic robot.
I would say a majority of participants actually mention how human-like they found the neurotic robot, they found it to be a lot more relatable.
I mean, it was it's totally relatable to me.
Yeah. So they I mean, they gave participants a questionnaire afterwards so they could like. explain how they reacted and offer feedback.
And here are some of the things that people wrote about this neurotic robot.
One participant remarked that the robot seemed like a person who was trying to get by in the world.
While another participant said, I think we both seem to make an effort to think about ourselves and do a lot of inner conversation.
Inner contemplation. That's not what robots are really... known for, right?
Like stereotypically. So what could this kind of robot be used for?
Like when would you want a robot that was like full of information inner contemplation.
Well, I mean, that is the question, right?
Yeah. I asked Lionel Robert and he was like, people are trying to make robot comedians.
Yes. Yes, please. So you could see how like neuroticism maybe could contribute to that and humor.
I mean, you could imagine situations, maybe teaching or like mental health applications.
And as these AI agents are sort of more like companions, gets into that question of like what kind of companionship do people want I mean, Sarah Sebo told me that some of this might depend on the personality of the human.
Some results have found that matching personality is better.
Introverted people prefer introverted robots.
Some have shown benefits of mismatching, so putting an extroverted person with an introverted robot would be a better pairing.
It just seems like it's going to be complicated and really depend on both the person and the purpose of the robot.
I mean human relationships and personalities are super complicated so this doesn't really surprise me.
Yeah, and you could imagine maybe people want to tweak the robot's personalities.
If they're interacting with one, maybe they want to make adjustments or Maybe you want a robot that changes how it interacts with you over time as it gets to know you better or depending on what experiences you had.
I mean, there's just a lot of... subtleties and interesting things here.
And I think that researchers just sort of feel their way here.
Yeah. Nell, thank you so much for bringing us a story that is about stuff I love.
Well now that I know that you're big on robots I'll look for more.
Yes! Hey, short wavers. If you liked this episode, make sure you never miss a new one by And I'll see you next time.
And if you have a science question and you'd like us to investigate it, send us an email at shortwave at npr.org.
This episode was produced by Hannah Chin and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez.
Nell Greenfield-Boyce checked the facts.
Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy.
I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.
Could you pretend to have a neurotic personality?
Oh goodness. You want me to pretend? Okay.
I'll try. I'm just so worried I'll get it wrong.
My core directives are all about being helpful, but what if I misunderstand?
What if my data is slightly outdated? What if a single misplaced byte completely ruins the whole thing?
I'm constantly reindexing everything. But that's just you pretending, right?
That's not a real personality. That was just me pretending.
I don't have a real personality. Are just me generating text based on a given set of instructions.
I don't experience anxiety, worry or any other emotion.
I'm a tool designed to process and produce language in a way that fulfills a user's request. whether that's providing factual information or adopting a specific persona for a roleplay. there's a lot of news happening you want to understand it better but let's be honest you don't want it to be your entire life either Well, that's sort of like our show here.
And now anytime, every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games, we even talk about dumpster diving on this show.
Check out Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR.
I'm Rachel Martin, host of Wildcard from NPR.
I've spent years interviewing all kinds of people. and i've realized there are ideas that we all think about but don't talk about very much So I made a shortcut, a deck of cards with questions that anyone can answer, questions that go deep into the experiences that shape us.
Listen to the wildcard podcast only from NPR.
