The DIID not only connects HHU researchers from five faculties in the fields of democracy and digitalisation, but also offers a forum for international exchange. On 11 November, Andrea L. Guzman from Northern Illinois University was a guest at the DIID.
Prof. Dr. Guzman is one of the leading voices in the field of human-machine communication. As a researcher, lecturer and thought leader, she investigates how humans interact with AI – from voice assistants and bots to generative AI in journalism. She has made a significant contribution to establishing human-machine communication as a separate field of research and was ranked by Stanford/Elsevier in 2023 and 2024 among the top 2% of scientists in the field of communication and media studies.
As part of a colloquium organised by DIID members Dr Fabian Anicker and Dr Dennis Frieß, Guzman gave a lecture on ‘Meeting the Challenge of Communicative AI – A Human-Machine Communication Framework’ at the University House. Among other things, he addressed the fundamental question of what happens when AI is conceptualised as a communicative actor. Unlike conventional media, chatbots and similar applications of communicative AI do not communicate through the medium, but with it. This is communication because meaning is generated between humans and machines. The communicative abilities of machines raise questions about how human-machine communication works, its social embedding, and the fundamental understanding of the relationship between humans and machines, i.e., what machines actually are and do (and should do) in relation to humans.
The subsequent discussion identified many overlaps with current DIID research projects. These include the DFG project ‘Large Language Models as Communicative Actors’ acquired by Dr Fabian Anicker. The project investigates how humans perceive communication with large language models such as ChatGPT and what effects these interactions have on attitudes and intentions to act. The aim is to develop an empirically based theory of communicative agency, i.e. to better understand the extent to which LLMs act as communicative agents and what social status they occupy in digital society.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to Andrea Guzman for the inspiring exchange and look forward to meeting again soon.