Related papers: Measuring Machine Companionship: Scale Development…
The notion of machine companions has long been embedded in social-technological imaginaries. Recent advances in AI have moved those media musings into believable sociality manifested in interfaces, robotic bodies, and devices. Those…
The quickly growing popularity of AI companions poses risks to mental health, personal wellbeing, and social relationships. Past work has identified many individual factors that can drive human-companion interaction, but we know little…
Mind perception (MP) is a psychological phenomenon in which humans automatically infer that another entity has a mind and/or mental capacities, usually understood in two dimensions (perceived agency and experience capacities). Despite MP's…
Conversational AI companions have grown prominent in public discourse, yet scholarly understanding of user experiences remains limited, with existing research organized around evaluative poles of harm and benefit rather than examining what…
AI companionship, where users develop emotional bonds with AI systems, has emerged as a significant pattern with positive but also concerning implications. We introduce Interactions and Machine Attachment Benchmark (INTIMA), a benchmark for…
Large language models are increasingly used for both task-based assistance and social companionship, yet research has typically focused on one or the other. Drawing on a survey (N = 202) and 30 interviews with high-engagement ChatGPT and…
Individuals are turning to increasingly anthropomorphic, general-purpose chatbots for AI companionship, rather than roleplay-specific platforms. However, not much is known about how individuals perceive and conduct their relationships with…
Companion chatbots offer a potential solution to the growing epidemic of loneliness, but their impact on users' psychosocial well-being remains poorly understood, raising critical ethical questions about their deployment and design. This…
Predicting the collaboration likelihood and measuring cognitive trust to AI systems is more important than ever. To do that, previous research mostly focus solely on the model features (e.g., accuracy, confidence) and ignore the human…
With the current progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and its increasingly broader applications, trust is seen as a required criterion for AI usage, acceptance, and deployment. A robust measurement instrument is essential to…
In this paper we present the first steps towards hardening the science of measuring AI systems, by adopting metrology, the science of measurement and its application, and applying it to human (crowd) powered evaluations. We begin with the…
With the growing utility of today's conversational virtual assistants, the importance of user motivation in human-AI interaction is becoming more obvious. However, previous studies in this and related fields, such as human-computer…
Shared experiences are fundamental to social connection, yet media consumption is increasingly solitary. While AI companions offer real-time reactions and emotional regulation, existing systems either rely on single-agent designs or lack…
This work examines how AI, especially agentic systems, is being adopted in engineering and manufacturing workflows, what value it provides today, and what is needed for broader deployment. This is an exploratory and qualitative…
AI companion chatbots are increasingly used for emotional support, with prior work in the domain predominantly documenting their mixed psychosocial impacts, including both increased emotional expression and heightened loneliness. However,…
Automated metrics for Machine Translation have made significant progress, with the goal of replacing expensive and time-consuming human evaluations. These metrics are typically assessed by their correlation with human judgments, which…
AI-powered companion chatbots (AICCs) such as Replika are increasingly popular, offering empathetic interactions, yet their psychosocial impacts remain unclear. We examined how engaging with AICCs shaped wellbeing and how users perceived…
As large language model (LLM)-enhanced chatbots become increasingly expressive and socially responsive, many users begin forming companionship-like bonds with them. This study investigates how using AI companions relates to psychological…
Large Language Model (LLM) sycophancy is a growing concern. The current literature has largely examined sycophancy in contexts with clear right and wrong answers, like coding. However, AI is increasingly being used for emotional support and…
While machine learning (ML) technology affects diverse stakeholders, there is no one-size-fits-all metric to evaluate the quality of outputs, including performance and fairness. Using predetermined metrics without soliciting stakeholder…