Comment by kohsuke
4 hours ago
So they run 5 different experiments to test the hypothesis, and they were nothing like what I imagined.
For example, in one study, they divide participants into two groups, have one group watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw (that highlights the high socio-emotional capabilities of a robot), while the other watches https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk (that highlights the low socio-emotional capabilities of a robot)
They are then asked if they agree or disagree with a (presumably hypothetical?) company's proposal to reduce employees' welfare, such as replacing a meal with a shake. Two groups showed a different preference.
This makes me think about that old question of whether you thank LLM or not. That is treating LLMs more like humans, so if what this paper found holds, maybe that'd nudge our brain subtly toward dehumanizing other real humans!? That's so counter intuitive...
Do you understand how they chose the two groups? And why show one group one video, and the other group the other video? Shouldn’t both groups be shown the same video, then check whether the group division method had any impact on the results? E.g. if group one was dance lovers and group two were dance haters, you wouldn’t get any data on the haters since they were shown the parkour video instead of the dance video.
Also, interesting bit: "Participants in the high (vs. low) socio-emotional capability condition showed more negative treatment intentions toward employees"
Apparently you do not understand how they chose the two groups. Group identity was not based on a survey or any attribute of the participating individuals.
Low and high socio-emotional groups refer to whether the group was shown the low or high socio-emotional video. The pre-test and exclusion based on lack of attention and instruction following was performed before group selection for each individual, which was presumably random.
Thanks! You’re right, I didn’t understand.