Martin Wattenberg

Forget human metaphors for software agents. Why not God metaphors?

Here's a paper that actually tested this! (Jung et al, CHI 22, https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3491102.3517653 )

Sample dialog from their protocol: "Greetings, I am the lord thy god. You shall help researchers at a university by participating in this research."

Their deadpan conclusion:
"an agent metaphor that locates higher than Human in the Great Chain of Being framework may disappoint workers in the system's ability due to high expectations"

Help me track down a citation! I remember reading about an old (1970s?) study, asking strong chess players to predict the highest possible rating a chess program would ever reach. The results were consistent: players usually said the maximum would be 100 points less than their own rating.

But I can't find a reference! Is this too on-the-nose to be true? Did I imagine it?

They named journals differently in the old days! I just was referred to a 1989 article published in "Intellectica."

(Reminds me of the Roz Chast cartoon of "The man who was loved for his lack of lack-of-pretense")

Q. How many minutes in February?
A. 8!

@rahulbot@vis.social How much background did people have going in? Had they already worked with HTML/JS before? (If some had React, that sounds pretty advanced... were the other students able to get up to speed quickly?)

@rahulbot@vis.social What technology / framework did the students use? I taught a code/art class with P5.js last semester, and I saw huge interest in the "interactive essay" form. I am wondering about doing more in a future version of the course. But it was pretty painful for students in p5.js!