There’s been discussion on whether people should say please and thank you to their Alexa or Claude, but should Alexa, Claude, and their robot relatives always maintain their level of civility when responding back to us? What is the point of (im)politeness in robotics? Linguist Derek Bousfield (expert on human politeness), computer scientist Blake Jackson (expert on user expectations of robots in terms of politeness), and psychologist Merel Keijsers (expert on robot bullying) discuss the pros and cons of robots that are able to be rude to humans.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

• The Influence of Politeness Behavior on User Compliance with Social Robots in a Healthcare Service Setting
• I’d blush if I could
• Can’t you see I am bothered?
• Stop ignoring me!
• Computers are social actors
• The morality of abusing a robot
• Should we respect LLMs?
• People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies
• Tact in noncompliance

What do you do if somebody else publishes your thesis as a book? This is what happened to Andrew Vonasch. Together, we investigated this new type of scam. We discovered a flood of stolen theses and the thieves’ method to publish them on Amazon and through other resellers. I interviewed Richard Elliott and sought legal advice from Ursula Cheer. We confronted IngramSpark with this scam. They removed the theses from their system but made it practically impossible to prosecute the offenders.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

• Cognitive Frugality Preserves Self-Regulatory Resources (Book on Amazon)
• Cognitive Miserliness Preserves the Self-Regulatory Resource (Andy’s thesis)
• Copyright and Trademark Infringement Claims at IngramSpark
• List of identified thesis theft
• Letter of complaint to IngramSpark
• First response from IngramSpark
• Second response from IngramSpark

This episode is a live recording of the Raising the Bar event that took place on 10 September 2024 in Christchurch, New Zealand. I explore the long-standing promise of robots that would handle household tasks and serve as teachers, caregivers, and companions. Despite advancements in social robots, they remain absent from our daily lives. Figures like Elon Musk continue to push the dream of humanoid robots, yet we must first ask what tasks are best left to humans. The rise of human-like robots also challenges us to reflect on our own identity and humanity.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

• Raising The Bar Podcast
• Able Mable Robot
• Tesla Optimus bots were controlled by humans during the ‘We, Robot’ event