Essay 06
What Changes When AI Enters the Room?
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This note shows which sources support the essay, what they establish, and where the evidence stops. It is part of the essay’s free evidence layer.
Correction (registered 8 September 2026; carried into the 9 September 2026 site release). Two factual points in the touch-study passage were corrected. What was published: “significantly more often (63 percent against 37) … with some rise in positive feeling”. What it now says: the within-group counts, 17 of 21 (touched) against 10 of 21 (not touched), with six unclear responses excluded (N=48), and “less negative feeling”. Why: the 63/37 figure was the split of all “yes” answers across the two groups (17/27 and 10/27), not a within-group compliance rate; and, on affect, the study (Hoffmann & Krämer, 2021) found significantly lower negative affect after the interaction, while the difference in positive affect after the interaction was not statistically significant. The essay’s conclusion was bounded accordingly. See the corrections log.
1. Physical presence matters more than physical embodiment alone
- Used for
- A survey of 33 experimental works comparing copresent robots, telepresent robots and virtual agents: copresent robots were generally more persuasive and more positively perceived, while a physical robot shown through a screen showed no clear advantage over a virtual agent.
- Best available evidence
- Jamy Li (2015), “The benefit of being physically present: A survey of experimental works comparing copresent robots, telepresent robots and virtual agents”, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 77, 23–37.
- What it supports
- The direction of findings across 33 experimental works, assessed qualitatively (not a pooled statistical meta-analysis), and the presence-over-embodiment interpretation.
- Where the evidence stops
- Mostly short experimental encounters, predominantly with pre-LLM machines, across varied tasks and outcome measures. What a standing, silent presence in a home does over time was not tested by these studies, and the essay says so explicitly.
- Source status
- Peer-reviewed journal article (qualitative survey).
- Kind (read from the source status)
- Peer-reviewed
2. Touch affected compliance; differences in robot evaluations were not statistically significant
- Used for
- In a laboratory study, forty-eight students had a scripted counselling conversation with the small humanoid robot NAO; six gave no clear yes-or-no answer and were excluded from the compliance analysis, and among the forty-two who did, those briefly touched agreed with the robot’s suggestion significantly more often (17 of 21, against 10 of 21 who were not touched) and laughed more, while the touch produced no statistically significant difference in perceived warmth, closeness, overall evaluation or satisfaction.
- Best available evidence
- Laura Hoffmann & Nicole C. Krämer (2021), “The persuasive power of robot touch: Behavioral and evaluative consequences of non-functional touch from a robot”, PLOS ONE 16(5): e0249554.
- What it supports
- The behavioural effect (compliance among clear responders, 17 of 21 versus 10 of 21). On affect, the study found valence significantly higher during the touched conversation and significantly less negative affect afterwards, while positive affect afterwards was higher but not statistically significant; the essay’s “less negative feeling” tracks the significant post-conversation finding. On the evaluation scales (warmth, closeness, overall evaluation, satisfaction) the differences were not statistically significant. The “63 percent against 37” figure that appeared in earlier drafts corresponds arithmetically to the shares of the 27 clear “yes” answers (17/27 and 10/27); it is a reconstruction of a confusingly reported figure, not a within-group rate and not a percentage basis the authors unambiguously label, and it is not used here.
- Where the evidence stops
- One laboratory study with one robot and a scripted conversation. The essay’s wider point, that a physical gesture can alter behaviour while the reported evaluations of the machine show no statistically significant change, is a bounded reading of this single pattern; a non-significant result on those scales is not evidence that conscious judgment was untouched, nor that an unconscious mechanism produced the effect.
- Source status
- Peer-reviewed journal article.
- Kind (read from the source status)
- Peer-reviewed
3. An early home humanoid with scheduled remote supervision
- Used for
- NEO, an early home humanoid from the company 1X, presented to early owners as arriving with basic autonomy; in a scheduled Expert Mode a 1X Expert can remotely supervise the robot through tasks it cannot yet manage alone; the owner can also pilot it remotely.
- Best available evidence
- Official 1X NEO product documentation (re-verified against the official source on the date below; live product documentation for an early-access product, not a permanent record).
- What it supports
- The product’s own description: basic autonomy, scheduled Expert Mode, remote supervision by a 1X Expert, and owner remote piloting. “1X Expert” is the official functional title; the official material does not establish the Expert’s employment status, and the essay does not claim it.
- Where the evidence stops
- Early-access product documentation for a fast-moving product: a provider’s description of its own offering, not an independent evaluation, and not a portrait of the average household. This is among the most perishable claims in the series and will be re-checked immediately before publication.
- Source status
- Official product documentation (early-access; provider self-report).
- Kind (read from the source status)
- Provider documentation
4. The Moxie shutdown
- Used for
- In December 2024 the company Embodied announced it was shutting down after funding fell through; its child-focused, cloud-dependent robot Moxie (retailing late in its life at about $800) would stop working on short notice without refunds; the company enclosed a farewell letter from the fictional Global Robotics Laboratory; families publicly documented children saying goodbye; a later community project, OpenMoxie, allowed a reduced local version for a small minority.
- Best available evidence
- Embodied’s own communications as documented in contemporary reporting, e.g. Axios and follow-up reporting on the OpenMoxie rescue. The company itself is defunct and its original pages are only partially available, so contemporary reporting of its communications is used.
- What it supports
- The shutdown’s timing, cause, cloud dependency, price range, no-refund/short-notice character, the farewell letter, and the partial community rescue.
- Where the evidence stops
- Grief and goodbye language belongs to the families, reporters and researchers who documented it, and the essay attributes it that way and does not claim every child was deeply attached. An exact server shut-off date is deliberately not stated because it was not confirmed from a primary source.
- Source status
- Company communications via contemporary reporting (primary pages partially unavailable).
- Kind (read from the source status)
- Provider documentation, Journalism
5. The shutdown as an end-of-life case study
- Used for
- A study treating the Moxie shutdown as a case study in how, and how not, to support emotional detachment when such a product reaches end of life.
- Best available evidence
- Bengisu Cagiltay et al., “RIP Moxie: Lessons for Supporting Emotional Detachment at Product End-of-Life through a Case Study of a Social Companion Robot”, Proceedings of CHI 2026.
- What it supports
- Qualitative analysis of the company’s public communications and users’ online reactions, framed as end-of-life design lessons.
- Where the evidence stops
- A case study built on public communications and online reactions, informative about this shutdown rather than a measurement of all affected families.
- Source status
- Peer-reviewed conference proceedings.
- Kind (read from the source status)
- Peer-reviewed