Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement of Machine Companionship: A Scoping Review

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Banks, Jaime, Li, Zhixin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Banks, Jaime
Li, Zhixin
author_facet Banks, Jaime
Li, Zhixin
contents The notion of machine companions has long been embedded in social-technological imaginaries. Recent advances in AI have moved those media musings into believable sociality manifested in interfaces, robotic bodies, and devices. Those machines are often referred to colloquially as "companions" yet there is little careful engagement of machine companionship (MC) as a formal concept or measured variable. This PRISMA-guided scoping review systematically samples, surveys, and synthesizes current scholarly works on MC (N = 71; 2017-2025), to that end. Works varied widely in considerations of MC according to guiding theories, dimensions of a-priori specified properties (subjectively positive, sustained over time, co-active, autotelic), and in measured concepts (with more than 50 distinct measured variables). WE ultimately offer a literature-guided definition of MC as an autotelic, coordinated connection between human and machine that unfolds over time and is subjectively positive.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_18119
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement of Machine Companionship: A Scoping Review
Banks, Jaime
Li, Zhixin
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
The notion of machine companions has long been embedded in social-technological imaginaries. Recent advances in AI have moved those media musings into believable sociality manifested in interfaces, robotic bodies, and devices. Those machines are often referred to colloquially as "companions" yet there is little careful engagement of machine companionship (MC) as a formal concept or measured variable. This PRISMA-guided scoping review systematically samples, surveys, and synthesizes current scholarly works on MC (N = 71; 2017-2025), to that end. Works varied widely in considerations of MC according to guiding theories, dimensions of a-priori specified properties (subjectively positive, sustained over time, co-active, autotelic), and in measured concepts (with more than 50 distinct measured variables). WE ultimately offer a literature-guided definition of MC as an autotelic, coordinated connection between human and machine that unfolds over time and is subjectively positive.
title Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement of Machine Companionship: A Scoping Review
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18119