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Centre for Cognitive Science (COGS), º£½ÇÉçÇø
Tuesday 11 April 2017, 11.00 am – 5.30 pm, room Jubilee 144
Registration: The deadline has passed, but there are still a few spaces left - email the organisers to enquire.

Inter-human relationships are relationships among conscious agents, yet the advent of social robotics raises a number of questions concerning consciousness and social interaction.

Robots today and in the near future are non-conscious beings.  But more and more they appear to be engaging as social participants.  How does this affect the way we understand “sociality”?

• In what ways can we best study how people experience robots designed to work in social settings?
• Will there be an inevitable drift towards over-anthropomorphizing in the way we describe our social interactions with artificial agents?
• How can robots operating in such settings be designed so as to have a greater balance of positive over negative outcomes in terms of human experience and social reality?
• What might be meant by “robot (self-) consciousness”?
• What are the ethical implications of social robotics?

This workshop will cover these and other questions concerning sociality, consciousness and robotics. It will be of interest to psychologists, philosophers, AI researchers and engineers concerned with the multidisciplinary issues raised by social robotics.

Keynote speakers:

• Friederike Eyssel (Bielefeld): "A social psychological perspective on social robotics"
• Margaret Boden (Sussex): "Robots and Relationships"

Invited speakers:

• Massimiliano Cappuccio (UAEU): "There’s no such thing as social robotics. Long live social robotics!"
• Antonio Chella (Palermo): "Social robotics and autism"
• Giulio Sandini (Genova): "Humanizing Robots"
• Robert Clowes (New University of Lisbon): "Current Social Technology, Near Future Social Robotics"

NEW:  Click here for programme, abstracts, speaker bios and more

The final programme will include other speakers (to be announced) and a panel discussion session. 

The event is held by the º£½ÇÉçÇø Centre for Cognitive Science (COGS), and is supported by the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology section (CEP) of the British Psychological Society and the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science.

Workshop organisers/further details:

• Steve Torrance – stevet@sussex.ac.uk
• Ron Chrisley – ronc@sussex.ac.uk

The workshop is open to everyone.  There is no charge for attendance, but places are limited.  Please register by emailing one of the workshop organisers.

How to get to the º£½ÇÉçÇø: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/directions