Building trust in robots: A narrative approach

Abstract

This contribution proposes a narrative approach to trust-building with regards to robots. This should serve as a complementary interpretation in order to find new ways of theorizing and studying the trust-building process. The first aim of the paper is to distinguish between already existing notions of trust-building in relation to robots. I provide an overview arguing that with respect to building trust, robots are currently conceptualized as agentic interaction partners, as artifacts in sociotechnical systems that can be altered based on novel engineering and design processes, and finally as a type of technology that can potentially disrupt existing normative and legal conventions. From this overview, this paper proposes the complementary approach based on a narrative conceptualization of robots. This conceptualization focuses on the way that robots capture the imagination of many, arguing that this is fruitful to take into account when theorizing and studying the process of building trust in robots. The paper then discusses how this conceptualization can be developed in interdisciplinary research in the social sciences by evaluating and analyzing future imaginaries, developing anticipatory concepts, and facilitating access to sociotechnical potential.