Perceptions of the Helpfulness of Unexpected Agent Assistance

Much prior work on creating social agents that assist users relies on preconceived assumptions of what it means to be helpful. For example, it is common to assume that a helpful agent just assists with achieving a user’s objective. However, as assistive agents become more widespread, human-agent interactions may be more ad-hoc, providing opportunities for unexpected agent assistance. How would this affect human notions of an agent’s helpfulness? To investigate this question, we conducted an exploratory study (N=186) where participants interacted with agents displaying unexpected, assistive behaviors in a Space Invaders game and we studied factors that may influence perceived helpfulness in these interactions. Our results challenge the idea that human perceptions of the helpfulness of unexpected agent assistance can be derived from a universal, objective definition of help. Also, humans will reciprocate unexpected assistance, but might not always consider that they are in fact helping an agent. Based on our findings, we recommend considering personalization and adaptation when designing future assistive behaviors for prosocial agents that may try to help users in unexpected situations.