Distinguished Lectures in Humanities: Hybrid Agencies in Human - Artificial Agents Interactions

Abstract

Humans have long tried to make artificial versions of themselves. It is now well established that we attribute human-like states to artificial others. However, the effect of interacting with artificial minds and bodies on the human sense of self and self-identity is less understood. In this talk I will present theoretical and empirical work looking at embodied joint agency in human/ human versus human/ robotic and virtual agents. Specifically, I will outline the key role of the human embodiment and sense of self in establishing joint agency with artificial others. I will discuss key implications of these claims on recent efforts to design autonomous and interactive artificial others. I will introduce the notion of ‘hybrid agency’ to describe these new, technologically mediated ways to embody and control in tandem human and artificial minds and bodies in real and virtual environments.

About the speaker

Dr Anna CIAUNICA is a Principal Investigator at the University of Lisbon, Portugal; and Research Associate at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, the UK. Before that she was Research Associate at the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London; and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She obtained her PhD from the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France.

Dr CIAUNICA is currently PI on three interdisciplinary projects looking at the relationship between self-consciousness, embodiment and social interactions in humans and artificial agents. Her work blends methods from cognitive psychology, social neuroscience, Virtual Reality and robotics to advance our understanding of the fundamental question ‘what is self-consciousness’ in humans, and how can we implement it in artificial agents.