In June 2022, the paper “The SPACE THEA Project” by Martin Spathelf and Oliver Bendel was published on arxiv.org. It was presented at the AAAI 2022 Spring Symposium “How Fair is Fair? Achieving Wellbeing AI” at Stanford University and came in 2nd place in the Best Presentation Awards. From the abstract: “In some situations, no professional human contact can be available. Accordingly, one remains alone with one’s problems and fears. A manned Mars flight is certainly such a situation. A voice assistant that shows empathy and assists the astronauts could be a solution. In the SPACE THEA project, a prototype with such capabilities was developed using Google Assistant and Dialogflow Essentials. The voice assistant has a personality based on characteristics such as functional intelligence, sincerity, creativity, and emotional intelligence. It proves itself in seven different scenarios designed to represent the daily lives of astronauts, addressing operational crises and human problems. The paper describes the seven scenarios in detail, and lists technical and conceptual foundations of the voice assistant. Finally, the most important results are stated and the chapters are summarized.” The paper will additionally be published in the proceedings volume of the symposium by the end of summer. It can be downloaded via arxiv.org/abs/2206.10390.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
