Boosting Robot Credibility and Challenging Gender Norms in Responding to Abusive Behaviour

Inspired by the recent UNESCO report I'd Blush if I Could, we tackle some of the issues regarding gendered AI through exploring the impact of feminist social robot behaviour on human-robot interaction. Specifically we consider (i) use of a social robot to encourage girls to consider studying robotics (and expression of feminist sentiment in this context), (ii) if/how robots should respond to abusive, and antifeminist sentiment and (iii) how ('female') robots can be designed to challenge current gender-based norms of expected behaviour. We demonstrate that whilst there are complex interactions between robot, user and observer gender, we were able to increase girls' perceptions of robot credibility and reduce gender bias in boys. We suggest our work provides positive evidence for going against current digital assistant/traditional human gender-based norms, and the future role robots might have in reducing our gender biases.