Call for Participation
“Secret Agents: The Real and Imagined Inner Lives of Interactive Robots”
Utrecht University Embodied AI Talk by dr. Tom Williams
February 2, 2023
15:00 to 16:00 CET
Online on MS teams
Registration can be done here: https://forms.gle/SvmJAwgwWMhpPtdH9. We will email the Teams link to the registered participants
For more information about the Embodied AI Initiative: https://embodiedaiuu.wixsite.com/home
ABSTRACT
Robots are Secret Agents. By this I mean that while computer scientists and roboticists may not view their robots as being fully autonomous, interactive, and adaptive, everyday users perceive them as such nonetheless. This creates a whole host of user expectations that may be hard to live up to — and that may cause problems when violated. In this talk, I’ll begin by explaining how robot design choices impact how people perceive robots and expect them to behave. I’ll then explain why robots are not simply agents, but are also moral and social agents, and explain the work the MIRRORLab has been doing to understand and address the unique perceptions and expectations that come along with these more nuanced types of agency. Finally, I’ll discuss how these two types of agency interact, and the unique challenges that this imposes.
BIO
Tom Williams is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines, where he directs the Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab. Prior to joining Mines, Tom earned a joint PhD in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Tufts University in 2017. Tom’s research focuses on enabling and understanding natural language based human-robot interaction that is sensitive to environmental, cognitive, social, and moral context. His work is funded by grants from NSF, ONR, and ARL, as well as by Early Career awards from NSF, NASA, and AFOSR.
EMBODIED AI TALK SERIES
After three successful panels, the Embodied AI initiative started organizing a monthly online Talk Series. The goal of this Talk Series is to further understand the research field, build community and increase the visibility of expertise on both national and international levels. This month, we warmly invite you to a talk, by Dr. Tom Williams who will discuss his research on enabling and understanding human-robot interaction that is sensitive to environmental, cognitive, social, and moral context.
CONTACT
Dr. Zerrin Yumak
Assistant Professor of Human-Centered Computing
Department of Information and Computing Sciences
Utrecht University
z.yumak@uu.nl
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