Human Interactions and their Implications for Ethical and Responsible Robotics and AI (RAI)

Speaker: Dr Emily Collins,  Interdisciplinary Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Research Scientist and a British Psychological Society Chartered Psychologist, University of Manchester

 

Date: Friday 24th January 2025

Time: 12.00 - 13.00

Location: Pam Liversidge Building, Floor F, Room F12 (in person only)

 

Increasing deployment of advanced technology in daily lives - from embodied robotics to AI algorithms - continues to raise ever more complex questions about the ethical implications of their use, and what that means in practical terms.

 

One approach is to frame the debate around what we mean by Responsible Robotic and AI (RAI) use. In this talk, Dr. Collins will argue that we need to place an understanding of human interactions, as central to our understanding of RAI use, in order to best understand the consequences of their short or long-term use. Who are the users? Who are the employers of those users? Who deploys the technology? And what do these mediating relationships have to do with who is ultimately responsible for what happens when we use technology in real-world, applied settings? Asking these practical questions get us closer to understanding what we mean by ethical RAI. Ethics, responsibility, and transparency will bring us to a discussion of trust. In the field of Human-Robot Interaction there is increasing interest in considering, measuring, and implementing subjective trust, and objective trustworthy factors, as it pertains to responsible RAI. Is a robot’s trustworthiness contingent on the user’s relationship with, and opinion of, the individual or organisation deploying the robot?

Dr. Collins will discuss examples highlighting the need for a new approach to studying how to most effectively deploy RAI in the real-world. This will demonstrate that there is no one approach to the answer of responsible, ethical, transparent and trustworthy RAI, because a human’s relationship with the person, employer, or government, who has given them RAI to work with, is not consistent.

 

Dr. Emily C. Collins is an interdisciplinary Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Research Scientist and a British Psychological Society Chartered Psychologist. She currently holds a Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellowship at The University of Manchester, in the Department of Computer Science. She has expertise in biomimetic, brain-based, therapeutic, and industrial nuclear robotics; HRI methodology development; and ethical and theoretical consideration of Robotics and AI (RAI). Her key research themes include trustworthiness and verification; responsibility and accountability; and the centrality of human psychology and socio-political factors to effective RAI deployment in the real world. 

 

See also: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/e.c.collins