Comparison of Philosophical Dialogue with a Robot and with a Human

Philosophical dialogue is an effective way to deepen one’s thoughts, but it is not easy to practice it because humans have emotions. We proposed the use of a robot in practicing philosophical dialogue and experimentally investigated how philosophical dialogue with a robot differs from philosophical dialogue with a human. The results of the experiment showed that (1) participants talking to a human spend more time answering than those talking to a robot, (2) the increase in the time participants spend answering comes from the increase in the time participants spend speaking and is not influenced by reaction latency and pause time so much, (3) the reason for the increase in the time spent speaking is that some participants who talked to a human were likely to choose their words so as not to make the interlocutor uncomfortable and rephrased their thoughts so that they were easier for the interlocutor to understand, and some participants who talked to a robot might have thought that the robot would not be concerned even if they give a brief answer, and finally (4) it seems there is no significant difference in the depth of thought between participants talking to a human and participants talking to a robot. These results suggest the effectiveness of using robots for philosophical dialogue, in particular for people who feel nervous about talking to others.