Science Circle Lecture: What artificially intelligent systems still have to learn to fit into our social system

In this talk, Prof Rosenthal von der Pütten advocates for implementing abilities into social robots that enable them to act competent to fit into our social environment.

Event Information

October 14, 2019, 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM

New Delhi
Organizer(s): DWIH New Delhi, RWTH Aachen University, German Embassy New Delhi

Every human shares common knowledge with other humans, for instance, about how the world works, and about basic needs and typical activities of humans. This is also known as “common ground”. Humans have the ability to take on another person‘s perspective and to see other humans as intentional agents – a phenomenon also known as Theory of Mind.

Hence, we have knowledge and mechanisms that enable us to interpret and predict the behavior of others. Only when robots are equipped with the same abilities and are able to “read” the needs, wishes and behavioral intentions of humans, will they successfully provide useful services to humans in social interactions.

In this talk, some concepts from social psychology will also be discussed, with regard to their applicability to artificial companions, on the basis of two companion examples from Science Fiction. In a summary, Prof Rosenthal von der Pütten outlines why and which processes of human social perception (e.g., the visual assessment of social situations) have to be investigated to help develop social robots.

Speaker

Professor Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten

Chair, Individual and Technology
Human Technology Centre
RWTH Aachen University

Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten is a Full Professor and director of the group Individual and Technology at the Department of Society, Technology, and Human Factors at RWTH Aachen University. She is affiliated with the Human Technology Center at RWTH Aachen University. Her research interests include social effects of artificial entities, human-robot interaction, linguistic alignment with robots and virtual agents, presence, and communication in social media.