Abstract
This article tries to shed light on the difference between human autonomy and AI-driven machine autonomy. The breadth of the studies concerning this topic is constantly increasing, and for this reason, this discussion is very narrow and limited in its extent. Indeed, its hypothesis is that it is possible to distinguish two kinds of autonomy by analysing the way humans and robots narrate stories and the types of stories that, respectively, result from their capability of narrating stories on their own. To approach the question of autonomy and its different interpretations in robots and humans, using narratives and stories as a lens, I proceed through four steps. First, I provide a brief summary concerning the state of the art with regard to issues concerning autonomy and AI. Second, I focus on specific issues concerning AI that are applied to storytelling. Third, I progressively approach narrative autonomy through what could seem a useless digression by addressing the problem of human creativity in relation to machine creativity. Fourth, I hypothesize a radical difference between narrative autonomy—which is proper to humans—and storytelling capability, which can be observed in both humans and machines.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Two of the most recent and telling examples of storytelling robots are the TV-series Storybots and Cody the Storytelling Robot.
Romele too refers to this dialogue, held in 1985, between the two (Romele 2020, pp. 91–92).
Some scholars noted that “gamification” is nowadays pervasive: it ranges from “free time” to education and identity construction. “Gamification” can be defined as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al. 2011, p. 1).
References
Aristotle (1980) Poetics. Introduction, commentary and appendixes by D W Lucas. Clarendon, London
Borges JL (1962) Funes the memorious in borges J L Ficciones, 2nd edn. Grove, New York, pp 107–117
Bruner J (1991) The narrative construction of reality. Crit Inq 18:1–21
Chiodo S (2021) Human autonomy, technological automation (and reverse). AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01149-5
Coeckelbergh M (2009) Virtual moral agency, virtual moral responsibility: on the moral significance of the appearance, perception and performance by artificial agents. AI & Soc 24:181–189
Coeckelbergh M (2015) The tragedy of the master: automation, vulnerability, and distance. Ethics Inf Technol 17:219–229
Coeckelbergh M, Reijers W, Romele A (eds) (2021) Interpreting technology. Ricoeur on questions concerning ethics and philosophy of technology. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Copeland S, De Moor A (2018) Community digital storytelling for collective intelligence: towards a storytelling cycle of trust. AI & Soc 33:101–111
Curry C, O’Shea JD (2011) The Implementation of a Storytelling Chatbot. Conference paper retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230814247_The_implementation_of_a_storytelling_chatbot
Delanty G, Harris N (2021) Critical theory and the question of technology: the Frankfurt school revisited. Thesis Eleven 166:88–108
Deterding S et al. (2011) Gamification: toward a definition. Conference paper. Retrieved from http://gamification-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/02-Deterding-Khaled-Nacke-Dixon.pdf
Feenberg A (1991) Critical theory of technology. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Formosa P (2021) Robot autonomy vs. human autonomy: social robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and the nature of autonomy. Mind Mach 31:595–616
Formosa P, Ryan M (2021) Making moral machines: why we need artificial moral agents. AI & Soc 36:839–851
Fossa F, Schiaffonati V, Tamburrini G (eds) (2021) Automi e persone. Introduzione all’etica dell’intelligenza artificiale. Carocci, Roma
Gervás P (2009) Computational approaches to storytelling and creativity. AI Mag 30(3):49. https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v30i3.2250
Gottschall J (2012) How stories make us humans. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston
Héder M (2020) The epistemic opacity of autonomous systems and the ethical consequences. AI & Soc. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01024-9
Idhe D (1990) Technology and the lifeworld. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis
Imaz-Scheinbaum (2021) Principles of narrative reason. Hist Theory 60:249–270
Leite I et al (2017) Narratives with robots: the impact of interaction context and individual differences on story recall and emotional understanding. Front Robot AI. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2017.00029
Mackenzie C, Stoljar N (eds) (2000) Relational autonomy. Feminist perspectives on autonomy, agency, and the social self. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Moor JH (2009) Four kinds of ethical robots. Philosophy now. A magazine of ideas. Retrieved from https://philosophynow.org/issues/72/Four_Kinds_of_Ethical_Robots
Peinado et al (2010) Assessing the novelty of computer-generated narratives using empirical metrics. Mind Mach 20:565–588
Pelgreffi I (2018) Filosofia dell’automatismo. Verso un’etica della corporeità, Orthotes, Salerno
Ricoeur P, Castoriadis C (2017) Dialogue on History and the Social Imaginary. Translated by GH Taylor in Adams S (ed.) Ricoeur and Castoriadis in Discussion. On Human Creation, Historical Novelty, and the Social Imaginary. Rowman & Littlefield, London, pp 3–20
Riedl M (2010) Storyplanning: creativity through exploration, retrieval, and analogical transformation. Mind Mach 20:589–614
Riedl M, León C (2009) Generating story analogues. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Dig Entertainment, 5(1): 161–166. Retrieved from https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AIIDE/article/view/12373
Romele A (2020) Digital hermeneutics. Philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, London, New York
Rössler B (2002) Problems with autonomy. Hypathia 17:143–161
Rubel A, Castro C, Pham A (2021) Algorithms and autonomy. The ethics of automated decision systems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Sassoon J (2019) Storytelling e intelligenza artificiale. Quando le storie le raccontano i robot. FrancoAngeli, Milano
Schilling M et al (2019) Editorial: Shared autonomy: learning of joint action and human-robot collaboration. Front Neurorobot 13:16
Schneewind J (1998) The invention of autonomy: a history of modern moral philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Stiegler B (1998) Technics and time I. The fault of epimetheus. Standford University Press, Stanford
Storr W (2019) The science of storytelling. Why stories make us human, and how to tell them. Collins, London
Striepe et al (2021) Modeling and evaluating emotion, contextual head movement and voices for a social robot storyteller. Int J Soc Robot 3:441–457
Valqui Vidal RV (2013) To be human is to be creative. AI & Soc 28:237–248
Véliz C (2021) Moral zombies: why algorithms are not moral agents. AI & Soc 36:487–497
Williams S (2011a) Democracy, freedom of speech, and feminist theory: a response to post and weinstein. Va l Rev 3:603–615
Williams S (2011b) Free speech and autonomy: thinkers, storytellers, and a systematic approach to speech. Const Comment 27:399–416
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author has no conflicts of interest. The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. The author has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. The author certifies that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. The author has no financial or proprietary interests in any materials discussed in this article. The author declares that the manuscript has no associated data.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Pierosara, S. Narrative autonomy and artificial storytelling. AI & Soc (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01595-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01595-9