pro-social machines but before I start
let me tell you a little bit about me
when I was a kid I wanted to be an
astronaut you know I love science
fiction I wanted to go to the moon to
Mars to really explore the space of
course I couldn’t and in the end I ended
up in technical doing electro technical
engineering I have to say I didn’t like
to degree very much but in the end I
found something that really inspired me
I found AI artificial intelligence this
idea that we can create machines that
are intelligent that get inspiration by
what we are as humans our intelligence
and put that into machine was something
out of science fiction so I started
working in AI and over the years AI has
gone up and down and recently there’s
been a lot of discussion about what AI
can do what has achieved and the dangers
of artificial intelligence yet I’m very
positive and an optimist and in fact I
think AI can have a big role in creating
a better society by creating what I call
pro-social machines so what is social
machines we live in this connected world
where our actions influence the
environments the people will work our
friends our families and our colleagues
and in general the society and is this
influence that we have between us this
kind of relationship that exists that
kind of make us humans however every day
when we watch the news
when we read in fact when we walk in the
streets we are we see there’s signs of
like a fantasy of north compassion
environment so not caring in fact Obama
even talked about the lack of empathy in
the world in fact humans face these
dilemmas that are unprecedented scale
antibiotic resistance climate change and
increasing inequality so how do we solve
these problems well we have to address
it from population specific analysis we
have to look at the society at the
dynamics of the society in order to
really see how to improve it but what is
a society you know with social media
society is not only us is all the
connections that we have and the
influence that we have from each other
through all kinds of technological means
in fact our society is changing as
machines like robots and I are at our
doorsteps influencing interacting with
as being our partners our friends our
drivers with autonomous cars and even
our companions so let me show you a
little bit about what these machines
these robots are doing together with
humans and this is research from my lab
you
[Music]
this cats plays chest and is a friend of
one of them
he understands them
and it’s like a companion this one helps
people example
[Music]
why
and he has emotion
these one has emotions and he plays
cards you please wake up
[Music]
other people really like to play with
[Music]
this was a running suit case that we
tested how people trusted
this one we have it in the hospital to
interact with children with autism
[Music]
this one is a tutor
[Music]
it perceives the situation it helps it
manages the learning and it’s like a
[Music]
so in reality what we have now is a
society where both us humans and
machines are part and these machines
become very intelligent so we have
humans diminished and machines so
pro-social machines were are what they
are machines that support and promote
actions that benefit the society and our
challenge of AI is how do you nurture or
merge these pro-social machines to make
a better society and to make humans help
each other and be together so we need to
design these robots these agents these
BOTS that emerge immersed in our world
is our going to promote collective
action are going to be pro social in
situations where naturally collaboration
and pro-sociality wouldn’t naturally
arise so let me give you an example of
the bystander effect does anyone know
about it bystander effect
okay I’ll tell you so imagine you have a
situation that you see an aggression
someone on the street being hit by a car
and you’re there alone the likelihood is
that you would act that you do something
about it but if there’s two or three or
many people the likelihood that you
would act would decrease okay and why
there are several processes that exist
in this bystander effect
the first one is called the audience
inhibition so you’re there nobody’s
acting so you don’t know anything about
it RNA can be some something on TV you
shouldn’t the other ones are not doing
it the second one is social influence
you know okay they’re not doing anything
so it’s not mine
roll to do and finally is the diffusion
diffusion of responsibility which is
well I’m not to blame there are so many
people here so why should I be
responsible okay so these three
processes are there and make us not act
not report cases we see cyber moving we
don’t act we see things that really
makes it Angry I don’t act so how can we
change this okay that’s the idea we’re
going to put machines we’re going to use
AI to change now in this society what
does it happen if we have now machines
there are intelligent there are
autonomous sometimes they even look like
us well you have a camera you think oh
well I know the robots and they drown
the drown is going around or another
robot so what do you do well you may
think well there’s cameras there’s the
robots I should not stay there okay or I
can say it’s not my problem
it should be ice the cameras are from
the government it’s someone else’s
problem I’m not going to act so machines
may be even making it worse but if we
make them intelligent and pro-social
then we can act then can make it better
so what these machines can do well they
can intervene they can act themselves
they can make people act so they
intervene and at some point in a way
they intervene people start acting and
that’s the goal of pro-social machines
so how we’re going to engineer there’s
an equilibrium and is to do with this
equilibrium idea so there’s an
equilibrium that we need to find and
there’s an equilibrium there in the
society that makes people not acting
and we need to challenge that
equilibrium we need to kind of force
something to change to unbalance this
established way of acting or not acting
so how to do that well first of all we
need to look at transparency
our machines especially AI machines need
to be transparent needs to justify their
actions need to make it clear what
they’re doing and why so that people can
understand why they should act as well
the second one we can enforce in these
machines some pro social norms some
norms that make them really good agents
and good robots and that given social
influence may lead people to to also act
in a certain way in fact there’s a world
of AI and people doing ethics in AR
exactly in this idea where we embed some
ethical norms or some ethical
constraints in the way we program our
machines so that’s extremely important
the second one the third one is we need
to kind of put some pathological
behaviors there so a machine that always
helps may be a good thing in a
population because it propagates this
kind of feeling of help so by creating
pathological behaviors pro-social ones
who may imbalance this equilibrium that
exists in the society and finally and
we’ve been working a lot on this we can
create in these machines some empathic
please the social influence okay well
we’ve had several projects some of the
projects address issues for bullying we
had a project called fear not to address
to help kids victims of bullying or to
train people how to be social cultural
sensitive to look at cultural
sensitivity but we can also simulate
societies using evolutionary game theory
and and create agents there that are
like artificial agents that will allows
us to study what happens at a society
level and we can build robots that are
empathic and are going to really help
and interact with people in that way in
fact this is the people project that’s
my students in the course of social
robotics did this last semester where
they studied the impact of rubbish bin
in the process of behavior picking up
rubbish and we had two conditions one
where the robotic rubbish bin didn’t act
into anything
and the other one where it did act and
nudged people to pick up rubbish and
there’s a really big difference in the
way that people act in the first one not
even 10% of the people picked up the
rubbish in the second one the second
condition they actually started picking
up rubbish and it is so simple that we
can do and yet can make such a big
difference so how can we engineer
pro-sociality and caring in a society I
think AI artificial intelligence has a
role there by creating these pro-social
machines that’s my goal and I hope that
it will be your goal as well after this
thank you
you [Applause]