The Ethics and Social Consequences of AI & Caring Robots. Learning Trust, Empathy, and Accountability

The project, led by Ericka Johnson at Linköping University, focuses on three cases where robots are carrying out social tasks: educational robots in schools, robots intended to give job interviews and robots in elderly care.

It is likely that robots will soon be providing us with health and social care at different stages of our lives. For this to work, the robots must be able to build trusting relationships with people and act in a manner that is ethically acceptable.

One important aspect of these relational intra-actions, and a challenge for researchers working with human-machine interaction, is therefore to program robots to behave sympathetically and accessibly.

The project is a collaboration between social science researchers at Linköping University and robotics researchers at the Social Robotics Lab in Uppsala. By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective inspired by both technical and social science research, two different approaches to human-robot relations will be combined: one focused on the small movements of the face and body and one theorising emotion.