"Jo Ann Oravec's Good Robot, Bad Robot: Dark and Creepy Sides of Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and AI is ... a three-hundred-page literature review of current human-device interaction research. ... I can certainly imagine assigning chapters from Oravec's work as foundational reading in any of my undergraduate robot media courses, especially those taken by business and marketing majors. This book belongs in engineering and marketing classrooms and in the hands of AI researchers." (Liz W. Faber, H-Net Reviews, h-net.org, August, 2024)

Chapter 1. Introduction: Some Dramaturgical and Ethical Approaches to the Dark Side.- Chapter 2. Negative Dimensions of Human-Robot and Human-AI Interactions: Frightening Legacies, Emerging Dysfunctions, and Creepiness.- Chapter 3. Love, Sex, & Robots: Sex Robots, Privacy, and Robot Addiction.- Chapter 4. The Long Robotic Arm of the Law: Emerging Police, Military, Militia, Security, and Other Compulsory Robots.- Chapter 5. Gilding Artificial Lilies: Artificial Intelligence's Legacies of Technological Overstatement, Embellishment, and Hyperbole.- Chapter 6. "Our Hearts Go Out to the Victim's Family": Death by Robot and Autonomous Vehicle.- Chapter 7. Robo-Rage Against the Machine: Abuse, Sabotage, and Bullying of Robots and Autonomous Vehicles.- Chapter 8. The Future of Embodied AI: Containing and Mitigating the Dark and Creepy Sides of Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and AI.

This book explores how robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance human lives but also have unsettling "dark sides."  It examines expanding forms of negativity and anxiety about robots, AI, and autonomous vehicles as our human environments are reengineered for intelligent military and security systems and for optimal workplace and domestic operations. It focuses on the impacts of initiatives to make robot interactions more humanlike and less creepy (as with domestic and sex robots).  It analyzes the emerging resistances against these entities in the wake of omnipresent AI applications (such as "killer robots" and ubiquitous surveillance). It unpacks efforts by developers to have ethical and social influences on robotics and AI, and confronts the AI hype that is designed to shield the entities from criticism. The book draws from science fiction, dramaturgical, ethical, and legal literatures as well as current research agendas of corporations. Engineers, implementers, and researchers have often encountered users' fears and aggressive actions against intelligent entities, especially in the wake of deaths of humans by robots and autonomous vehicles. The book is an invaluable resource for developers and researchers in the field, as well as curious readers who want to play proactive roles in shaping future technologies.  
Jo Ann Oravec (MA, MS, MBA, PhD) is a full professor in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (Department of Information Technology and Supply Chain Management), as well as the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies, UW-Madison. Her publications include Virtual Individuals, Virtual Groups. She was the first chair of the Privacy Council of the State of Wisconsin.