"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?", Artificial Intelligence and the Interactionist Stance

The lure of understanding biological intelligence has long occupied researchers. Success has always been measured in peer review, number of citations, or how influential some piece of work is in inspiring the next generation of re- searchers. What human-robot interaction (HRI) and artificial intelligence (AI) promises is a metric of believability that is not intrinsic to the values of the researcher or community of practice but to the utility and successful function of the robotic artifact within a larger society. This paper is a reflec- tion and response to the hypothesis that HRI is a pure, funda- mental art of artificial intelligence and the last great successor to a domain fraught with the trappings of an art that lost its way.