in an office environment. In the second stage, Alice
was brought to their homes several times over a
period of about two months, where the ladies
continued the conversation with Alice.
For technical reasons, we used a Wizard of Oz
set-up in which a technician operated Alice behind
the scenes as a puppeteer (in a different room,
unseen by the ladies). While Alice filmed the
conversation through her camera-eyes, a separate
film camera in the room recorded the conversation
as well. The participating ladies were fully informed,
yet awareness of the camera seemed to dissipate
after a while.
In viewing the recorded materials, most striking
was the discrepancy between what the women said
about Alice cognitively and what they experienced
emotionally. Offline, while not being on camera, it
was almost as if their social environment withheld
them from enthusiastically speaking about Alice, as
if they were ashamed that they actually loved talking
to a robot. In their homes, even before Alice was
switched on or before the camera ran, the ladies
were immediately busy with Alice, greeting her and
wondering where she had been, what she had seen,
etc.
All women tended to approach Alice as a
helpless child, like a grandchild, but apparently were
not surprised that this child posed rather adult and
sometimes almost indiscrete questions about
loneliness or life situations. When Alice looked
away at the wrong moment, one lady said “What are
you looking at? You’re not looking at me while I
talk to you.” She did not frame it as an error of the
robot, which it was. She brought it up as an
observation, a kind of attentiveness, while pointing
the child at certain behaviour. Fully aware of the fact
that Alice could not eat or drink, the old lady still
wanted to offer food and drink to Alice. While she
had her coffee, she said to Alice “You cannot have
cookies can’t you? A pity, for you … well, now I
have to eat it.” The smile and looks at Alice revealed
sharing a good joke. Interestingly, a similar event a
few weeks later occurred: The lady had prepared
two slices of cake on a dish while she watched TV
together with Alice. She asked Alice: “You still
can’t have cake, can you?” This time, however, it
was not a joke; the old lady showed regret. This
should really be seen as a compliment; the wish to
enjoy the food together with Alice may tell us
something about how the robot felt as interpersonal
contact.
While Alice stayed longer in the house, the need
to talk vanished. Yet, the ladies did like it that
‘someone’ was there; that some social entity was
present. This may refer to the difference between
someone paying you a short visit or a person living
with you: It may indicate that one feels at ease and
need not entertain one’s company. At times, one of
the ladies read the newspaper aloud to Alice just to
share the news with ‘someone.’ The ladies sang with
her, showed her photo books of the family, did
physiotherapy, and watched the World
Championships with her.
It seemed that the less socially skilled had greater
benefit from Alice. Because of Alice, the ladies
drew a lot of attention: on the streets and in public
places. People called them up to ask how things
were with Alice. People sent newspaper articles
about robot care. That alone made the ladies less
lonely but obviously, this novelty effect shall decay
as Alice becomes more common; but for now it
worked quite well. Alice also worked for those who
needed physical activation. One of the ladies would
practice more often, also in the long run, if Alice
would ask her daily. She would really like to do it
for Alice. Another lady wanted to write to a friend
for two weeks but did not get to it. When Alice
asked about that friend, the lady was a bit ashamed
and started writing right away.
An aspect we also observed in another TV report
(De Jager & Grijzenhout, 2014) is that a social robot
works as a trusted friend. People confide in them
and tell them painful life events and distressing
family histories they hardly ever tell to a living
person. When the – in this case Nao – robot Zora
asked “Are you crying?” this was enough to make
one of the ladies crack and pour her heart out (De
Jager & Grijzenhout, 2014).
The lonelier the lady, the easier a social robot
was accepted. We know that an old lady with an
active social life did not care about a companion
robot – here Zora – not even after a long period of
exposure (De Jager & Grijzenhout, 2014). On the
other hand, we talked to a 92 year old woman with a
large family, who stated: “I have so many visitors
and then I have to be polite and nice all the time. A
robot I can shut off.”
Part of the acceptance of Alice among lonely
people appears purely pragmatic: Better something
than nothing – a prosthetic leg is better than no leg at
all. The initial resistance disappeared over time.
Another aspect that contributed to the acceptance of
the robot was that nobody in their social
environment reminded them of talking to a robot –
they could live the illusion and enjoy it. Without
exception, each lady was surprised when seeing
Alice again that she had a plastic body and that she
was so small. They said things like: “Last time,
TheIn-betweenMachine-TheUniqueValuePropositionofaRobotorWhyweareModellingtheWrongThings
465