Understanding and embracing artificial agents’ impact on the social dynamics of families

Introduction

How we trust, feel, understand, and connect with family members shapes the well-being of all family members. With families increasingly inviting artificial agents into their life, questions arise about how we can describe these dynamics in the age of artificial intelligence.

Project Overview

Integrating insights and methods from family psychology, social neuroscience, and human-AI interaction, F-AI-MILY will:

1. Establish a new group-centred mobile-lab approach to study the neurocognition of family social dynamics.
2. Describe the developmental aspects of changes in households’ social dynamics during long-term interactions with artificial agents.
3. Identify how sustainable interactions with artificial agents can provide support in households with chronic illness.

Methodology

Group-Centred Mobile Lab

First, we will develop a new group-centred mobile lab to study how the key mechanisms of social dynamics, similarity, and distance between family members are impacted by interactions with artificial agents.

Using this innovative neurocognition-at-home approach, we will measure both behavioral and brain measures of key attitudes and behaviors of all family members and uncover social dynamics with unprecedented detail and clarity.

Child Development Interaction

Second, we will test how child development interacts with the impact of artificial agents on social dynamics. Going beyond one-off interactions, we will directly test how long-term living with an artificial agent affects families with children (4-12 years) that differ in their flexibility to the influence of these agents.

Support for Vulnerable Households

Third, we will use the neurocognition-at-home approach to guide the development of artificial agents to support vulnerable households. This artificial agent support system targets families coping with chronic illness and aims to change maladaptive to adaptive social dynamics.

Conclusion

The innovative, interdisciplinary, and full-circle approach of F-AI-MILY offers new groundbreaking vistas on family systems, neurocognition of social behavior, and the development of artificial agents.