Monat: September 2022

Dear all,

We would like to invite you to two talks by Bipin Indurkhya on child-robot interaction and AI in Psychotherapy. This will be a hybrid event. If you wish to attend in-person, please send an email to fatih.sivridag@uni-goettingen.de so that we can manage the number of participants in accordance with the current guidelines. Please find the details of the talks below:

Talk – 1: Child-Robot Interaction

Date: 29.09.2022
Time: 10:00 – 11:30
Venue: Georg-Elias-Müller Institute for Psychology, Gossler Str. 14, 37073 Goettingen, Room: 1.134

Zoom room: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/65952574377?pwd=VzhOQ0tlaTI5amJQTldKQVBPbmY2dz09
Meeting ID: 659 5257 4377
Passcode: CRI_Wsi

Title: In-the-wild studies on child-robot interaction

Abstract: Studying interactions of children with humanoid robots in familiar spaces in natural contexts has become a key issue for social robotics. In this talk, I will introduce this research methodology, which is often referred to as “in-the-wild”, and contrast it with controlled experiments that are usually done in labs. I will discuss some difficulties of using this methodology, and present techniques for data analysis.

In recent years, we have conducted several Child-Robot Interaction (CRI) events using the Pepper and the Nao robots with Turkish, Polish, and Japanese children. One of the issues we have explored is the role of trust and expectations towards the robot in determining the success of CRI. I will present some observations from the video recordings of our CRI events and the transcripts of free-format question-answering sessions with the robot using the Wizard-of-Oz (WOZ) methodology. From these observations, we identified children’s behaviors that indicate trust (or lack thereof) towards the robot, e.g., challenging behavior of a robot or physical interactions with it. We also gathered insights into children’s expectations, e.g., verifying expectations as a causal process and an agency or expectations concerning the robot’s relationships, preferences and physical and behavioral capabilities. Based on our experiences, we will suggest some guidelines for designing more effective CRI scenarios.

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Talk – 2: AI Ethics in Psychotherapy

Date: 30.09.2022
Time: 10:30 – 12:00
Venue: Georg-Elias-Müller Institute for Psychology, Gossler Str. 14, 37073 Goettingen, Room: 1.134

Zoom room: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/69964943230?pwd=OXFLS1RWV3NGSnN5VllSTnhtUkNZZz09
Meeting ID: 699 6494 3230
Passcode: AI_Wsi

Title: Faking Emotions and a Therapeutic Role for Robots and Chatbots: Ethics of Using AI in Psychotherapy

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a proliferation of social robots and chatbots that are designed so that users make an emotional attachment with them. Such robots and chatbots can also be used to provide psychotherapy. In this talk, we will start by presenting the first such chatbot, a program called Eliza designed by Joseph Weizenbaum in the mid 1960s. This program did not understand anything, but relied on keyword matches, and a few simple heuristics to keep the conversation flow and provide an illusion of understanding to the user. At that time, Weizenbaum was taken aback by the intensity of emotional attachment users felt towards this program, prompting him to highlight this negative aspect of technology in his thought provoking book „Computer Power and Human Reason“.

Nowadays, Eliza-like systems and interfaces are used often in social robots and chatbots. We will look at some such systems and argue that they can have a positive and therapeutic effect on the user, and that in some situations at least this kind of robot-human interaction transcends human-human interaction. However, developing and deploying such systems raise a number of ethical issues, some of which we will discuss in this talk.

Best regards,

Fatih Sivridag.

Dear all,

Prof. Dr. Peter Carruthers (University of Maryland) will give a virtual talk at the CogSci Colloquium on Wednesday, Sept 28th, at 15:00 (CEST).

Title: Questioning and model-free meta-cognition

Abstract: There has been a flurry of recent work on the cognitive neuroscience of curiosity. But everyone in the field offers definitions of curiosity that are metacognitive in nature. Curiosity is said to be a desire for knowledge, or a motivation to learn about something, and so on. This appears problematic. It either makes it difficult to see how curiosity can properly be attributed to cats and rats (let alone birds and bees), or it commits us to attributing capacities for self-awareness in these creatures for which we lack evidence. The goal of the talk is to offer a re-interpretation of the main findings in the literature, showing how it is possible for creatures to be curious while lacking any conception of their own or others’ minds. But at the same time I will argue that there is something that a metacognitive conception of curiosity gets right. The talk will first situate curiosity among affective states generally, before going on to elucidate both its contents and its dependence on forms of model-free sensitivity to one’s own ignorance.

Prof. Carruthers agreed to have few single/small-group meetings after his talk. If you are interested in meeting with him to discuss your own or his research, please register until Wednesday (Sept 21) by sending an e-mail to Feride (feridenur.haskaracakizilay@uni-goettingen.de).

The talk will be held online, via Zoom:
https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/66024969652?pwd=YWIvWkNqend6dmE5UmloS1B1MXBRZz09
Meeting ID: 660 2496 9652
Passcode: 649695

Best wishes,

Feride and Marina