Connectionists: Lecture Series Philosophy of Science and Machine Learning: November 28th, 2024, Leda Berio

[Schuster, Annika Noel]

We are delighted to invite you to our upcoming lecture series, Philosophy of Science and Machine Learning.

Lecture Series Overview: In an age where artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming science, it becomes increasingly important to reflect critically on the foundations, methodologies, and implications of these advancements. This lecture series will investigate fundamental issues in AI from the vantage point of philosophy of science, which includes topics such as the transparency and interpretability of AI within scientific research, as well as the impact of AI on scientific understanding and explanation.

More information: https://udnn.tu-dortmund.de/index.php/activities/lecture-series-philosophy-of-science-and-machine-learning/

Upcoming Talk: We are excited to announce the next talk in the series:

Title: Social interaction with artificial agents: when, how, why? Perspective taking and social scripts in HRI and interaction with AI
Speaker: Dr. Leda Berio, Ruhr-University Bochum
Date & Time: November 28th, 2024, 4:15 PM CET
Location: TU Dortmund University

Please note that the talk by Tim Räz, originally planned for this date, was canceled.

Talk Abstract:
When a robotic dog wags its tail, we do not hesitate to interpret it as a sign of happiness. We get upset when seeing little robot dinosaurs, barely more than sophisticated toys, mistreated. We hesitate to strike little bug-like robotic objects. Evidence shows, in other words, that our interactions with robots are laden with affect; and this is despite our full awareness that robots do not, ultimately, feel. What are the factors that influence these attributions? What aspects of design can influence the way we interact with artificial agents? I ague that considering interactions with artificial agents in terms of emotionally-loaded scripts can contribute to explaining our attribution of emotional states to social robots as well as our emotional reactions during interactions with them. Moreover, it helps us identify the normative components of such interactions. In this talk, I first explore the ways design features influence basic mechanisms of spontaneous perspective taking with social robots, presenting data that shows how visual appearance modulates these effects. Next, I propose that to explain more sophisticated mental state attribution, we should consider social interactions as activating scripts and schemata (Bicchieri and McNally, 2018) that come with expectations on how agents should behave and feel. Scripts contain information about expected emotional reactions, and their activation prescribe the interpretation of emotions in normative ways, as well as emotional attributions. In this sense, I suggest, when interacting with social robots, our behaviors and emotions, as well as our attributions, are highly normatively regulated. To conclude, I discuss how basic design features relate to the activation of scripts.

How to Attend:

  *   In-Person: Please send an e-mail to udnn.ht at tu-dortmund.de<mailto:udnn.ht at tu-dortmund.de>. If you would like to join us for dinner afterwards, please let us know so we can make a reservation.


  *   Online: Please register via the following form: https://forms.microsoft.com/r/W3whw0ac3B. We will send you a Zoom link before the talk.


We look forward to your participation and insightful discussions.

This lecture series is a special edition of the AI Colloquium at TU Dortmund University, co-organized by the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, the Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security (RC Trust), and the Center for Data Science & Simulation at TU Dortmund University (DoDas). The Lecture Series is organized by the Emmy Noether Group "UDNN: Scientific Understanding and Deep Neural Networks" (https://udnn.tu-dortmund.de/)

Kind regards,

The UDNN team

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