Human-centered AI: from robots to arts
Looking back on the HAI kick-off meeting
On September 10th, our focus area Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) had its first official event of the new academic year: an informal online kick-off meeting. With more than sixty attendees, consisting of both Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 researchers, students, support staff and even researchers from other institutes, it proved that even online it is possible to get together with a network as diverse as ours!
HAI research and SIGs
For the new staff and students, chair of the focus area Mehdi Dastani provided a short introduction of Human-centered AI. Then the HAI Special Interest Groups (SIG) coordinators had the opportunity to present their research. We got to know two of the three new SIGs: Leendert van Maanen told about his 鈥淎BC SIG鈥 (AI and Behavioural Change), and Iris van der Tuin introduced us to 鈥淎I in Cultural Inquiry and Art鈥.
From the five already existing Special Interest Groups, three coordinators also presented a short pitch of their research. Natasha Alechina (Autonomous Intelligent Systems), Rosalie Iemhof (Knowledge Representation and Reasoning) and Chris Janssen (Social and Cognitive Modelling) told more about how they became interested in their respective research fields, and what the main research lines of their SIGs are.
Different facets
These talks highlighted the different facets of HAI research. Of course human-centered AI concerns robots, and human and AI interaction, but the HAI research field also encompasses ethics, logic, reasoning, media & art, and much more.
At the end of the meeting the HAI board, Jan Broersen, Mehdi Dastani, Stefan van der Stigchel and Yoad Winter, discussed questions during a short HAI panel. We had compiled a list with questions from students, but in the end the board could only discuss a couple of them, due to time constraints. Afterwards the general consensus was: we should do this more often!
To be continued
We are currently looking for ways to organize additional online informal meetings in the coming year. Keep an eye out on our communication channels to be updated on our activities: join us in , to our newsletter and check our events.