Mirages: On Anthropomorphism in Dialogue Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how linguistic cues in dialogue systems influence user anthropomorphism, highlighting risks like over-reliance and stereotypes, and advocates for careful design to mitigate these issues.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive discussion of linguistic factors affecting anthropomorphism in dialogue systems and offers guidelines for responsible design and development.

Findings

Linguistic cues significantly influence user personification.

Anthropomorphism can reinforce gender stereotypes.

Design choices impact user reliance and perceptions.

Abstract

Automated dialogue or conversational systems are anthropomorphised by developers and personified by users. While a degree of anthropomorphism may be inevitable due to the choice of medium, conscious and unconscious design choices can guide users to personify such systems to varying degrees. Encouraging users to relate to automated systems as if they were human can lead to high risk scenarios caused by over-reliance on their outputs. As a result, natural language processing researchers have investigated the factors that induce personification and develop resources to mitigate such effects. However, these efforts are fragmented, and many aspects of anthropomorphism have yet to be explored. In this paper, we discuss the linguistic factors that contribute to the anthropomorphism of dialogue systems and the harms that can arise, including reinforcing gender stereotypes and notions of acceptable language. We recommend that future efforts towards developing dialogue systems take particular care in their design, development, release, and description; and attend to the many linguistic cues that can elicit personification by users.