Hilla-Marja

Honkalammi

The exponential development of artificial intelligence is shaping society. In this evolution, understanding how humans interact with technologies that are designed to be communicative subjects rather than mere objects is key. This is particularly important when assessing the potential of AI in education and its possible future impact on society. The aim of my research is to investigate how foreign language users talk to a robot with an interface to a generative language model.

Drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis research, interaction is conceptualised as a localised, sequentially organised collaborative activity 'done' by participants using a wide range of verbal, multimodal and material resources. Rather than focusing solely on the robot or human perspective, their reciprocal interactions are explored. I study the social practices of humans interacting with robots by examining how the coordination between humans and robots is structured on a turn-by-turn basis.