Katrin Etzrodt

Artificial agent technologies are increasingly shaping our daily lives as they facilitate communication and provide information. The development in this area has matured past its initial stage, yet it is far from reaching its peak potential. Already, we are beginning to observe their impacts on our existence.

These developments sparked curiosity and raised significant questions for me about the implications we’ll face as their influence continues to grow.

In my dissertation, I delved into these questions by focusing on voice-based assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. My exploration led me to hybrid definitions of social situations with these machines, which, e.g., differed depending on age, experience, or the number of involved humans. Yet, I encountered numerous challenges in theory and in measurement, which left me with more questions than answers.

During my postdoctoral journey, I’m expanding my research to address the theoretical and methodological challenges that arise as we seek to understand how people define (social) situations within the realm of human-machine communication and the ramifications of these definitions. Drawing on my previous research I will start with the definition of the machine’s ontology in the communication situation.