Social Robots

Monday 4th November 2019, 7pm

Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street

Speaker:  Emily Cross

Understanding how we perceive and interact with others is a core challenge of social cognition research. This challenge is poised to intensify in importance as the ubiquity of artificial intelligence and the presence of humanoid robots in society grows. My group’s research applies established theories and methods from psychology and neuroscience to questions concerning how people perceive, interact, and form relationships with robots. In this talk, I review recent evidence from behavioural and brain imaging studies that aim to provide deeper insights into the relationship between social cognition and brain function. Examples from work comparing social perception of humans compared to robots highlights the importance of examining how perception of and interaction with artificial agents in a social world is revealing fundamental insights about human social cognition.

 Emily Cross is Professor of Social Robotics at the University of Glasgow.