In November last year, LTI ran an event at Manchester Cathedral, which was funded by and organised as part of the ESRC annual Festival of Social Science. The event, 'Robots vs Loneliness?', emerged from LTI's project Living with and Loving Machines (lead researcher: Dr Scott Midson). It featured a public discussion that brought together a panel of experts from different fields to share their research on social trends with robotics, and to respond to audience member's questions.
Panel members included Prof Rena Papadopoulos (Middlesex University), Dr Beth Singler (Cambridge University, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence), James Young (BBC presenter), and Dr Dave Cameron (University of Sheffield). Discussions highlighted concerns about replacement of humans, projection of personhood to machines, the type of sociality we might expect or demand from robots, and how loneliness itself relates to, for example, solitude. More details of the event are on the minisite.
Below is a short trailer of the event.
A full video of the event can be viewed on the LTI YouTube website.