Machine Social Roles

Definition

Machine Social Roles examines machine social roles within the broader domain of norms, roles, rights, control and long-term coevolution between humans and artificial agents.

Why this matters

Machine Social Roles can materially affect human agency, capability, belonging, livelihoods, culture, trust, resilience and long-term societal outcomes.

Research questions

Under which conditions does machine social roles improve human and system outcomes, how do effects vary across populations and contexts, and what safeguards prevent dependency, exclusion, distortion or loss of agency?

Hypotheses

A transparent, participatory and human-directed approach to machine social roles, with explicit safeguards and longitudinal evaluation, will improve human control; trust calibration; dependency; cooperation; conflict; role clarity; safety; wellbeing compared with opaque, automation-first or short-term approaches.

Proposed methods

controlled human-agent studies; governance simulations; ethnography; dependency analysis; conflict games; longitudinal ecosystem observation; literature and policy review; expert and affected-user interviews; reproducibility testing; methods adapted specifically to Machine Social Roles

Stakeholders and beneficiaries

governments; communities; employers; workers; unions; educators; infrastructure operators; emergency services; civil society; researchers; investors; technology providers