Artificial agents such as robots, virtual reality characters and chatbots are an integrative part of our modern world. Humans have long tried to recreate artificial versions of themselves.
Despite their ubiquitous presence and increasing impact on our daily lives, little is known how these novel forms of social interactions with artificial others affect our self-consciousness, embodiment and social self.
“The Interacting Self: From Self-Consciousness to Social Interactions in Humans and Artificial Agents” – INTERSELF – is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary project that examines the effect of interacting with artificial selves and bodies on human self-consciousness and social interaction.
INTERSELF is generously funded by a Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) grant under the reference PTDC/FER-FIL/4802/2020, awarded to Dr Anna Ciaunica (PI) and Prof. Antonia Hamilton (co-PI).
It brings together an interdisciplinary team of world-leading experts and rising young researchers in philosophy, computational and cognitive neuroscience and robotics to provide a new understanding of how social interactions with human and artificial agents impacts the way we relate to ourselves, to our bodies and to others.
INTERSELF ambitiously aims to demonstrate that the more we advance in the goal of making, understanding and interacting with Artificial Others, the more we will learn what is essential for the Human Self.