Behavioral Cues of Humanness in Complex Environments: How People Engage With Human and Artificially Intelligent Agents in a Multiplayer Videogame.

The development of AI that can socially engage with humans is exciting to imagine, but such advanced algorithms might prove harmful if people are no longer able to detect when they are interacting with non-humans in online environments. Because we cannot fully predict how socially intelligent AI will be applied, it is important to conduct research into how sensitive humans are to behaviors of humans compared to those produced by AI. This paper presents results from a behavioral Turing Test, in which participants interacted with a human, or a simple or "social" AI within a complex videogame environment. Participants (66 total) played an open world, interactive videogame with one of these co-players and were instructed that they could interact non-verbally however they desired for 30 min, after which time they would indicate their beliefs about the agent, including three Likert measures of how much participants trusted and liked the co-player, the extent to which they perceived them as a "real person," and an interview about the overall perception and what cues participants used to determine humanness.