Jevin West

The benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents

A growing body of research suggests that the recent generation of LLMs excel, and in many cases outpace humans, at writing persuasively and empathetically, at inferring user traits from text, and at mimicking human-like conversation believably and effectively---without possessing any true empathy or social understanding. I will refer to these systems as 'anthropomorphic conversational agents' to aptly conceptualize the ability of LLM-based systems to mimic human communication so convincingly that they become increasingly indistinguishable from human interlocutors. This ability challenges the many efforts that caution against ‘anthropomorphizing’ LLMs, attaching human-like qualities to non-human entities. When the systems themselves exhibit human-like qualities, calls to resist anthropomorphism will increasingly fall flat. While the AI industry directs much effort into improving the reasoning abilities of LLMs — with mixed results — the progress in communicative abilities remains underappreciated. In this talk, I will aim to raise awareness for both the benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic agents with a focus on the research questions associated with these agents. 

Jevin West is a Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington and, importantly, an IceLab Alumnus! He co-founded and was the inaugural director of the Center for an Informed Public at UW, aimed at resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society and strengthening democratic discourse. In addition, he co-founded the DataLab at UW and is a Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute and Affiliate Faculty for the Center for Statistics & Social Sciences. His research in computational social science and teaching focus on the impact of data and technology on science, with a focus on slowing the spread of misinformation in and about science. Based on his interdisciplinary experience at IceLab, he has published in biology, complexity, computer science, human computer interaction, philosophy, law, and sociology. He is also the co-author of the book, “Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World,” which helps non-experts question numbers, data, and statistics without an advanced degree in the quantitative sciences.  Jevin was a member of IceLab from 2011 to 2012 during his time as a postdoctoral researcher.

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