Inaugural Lecture: Koen Hindriks

De Robot Dialogen – The Robot Dialogues

We are social creatures. We talk to get to know each other, to tell one another what has happened, and to persuade one another. We talk to animals even though they do not talk back. And we talk to machines: our cars, laptops, and smartphones. Until recently this has been a one-way street, but because of recent progress in Artificial Intelligence we can now also have dialogues with machines, or robots.

Robots have become social machines. We are at the start of a development where social interaction with robots does not yet compare well with that between humans. Moreover, this development, raises many interesting questions: What is social interaction? How can we improve dialogues with robots through Artificial Intelligence? Will dialogues with robots ever compare with human conversation and how can we measure the quality of interaction? And how important is it that robots actually understand what we say?

In his inaugural lecture, Koen Hindriks, professor Artificial Intelligence at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, will be discussing these questions and more.

The invitation with more information can be seen here.

This lecture will be in Dutch.

About the Speaker

Koen Hindriks is full professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. He has been an academic for most of his life but also worked as a project manager at Accenture.

Koen’s research on Artificial Intelligence is aimed at making robots more social by using psychological insights on human intuition and reasoning (Dual Process Theory) and applying and developing cognitive agent technology.

On August 24, 2016, he launched the spin-off company Interactive Robotics, developing a unique social interaction architecture for controlling social robots and robots for in the classroom, for teaching children the possibilities as well as limits of current robot technology. Koen has developed robots as companions and assistants for healthcare and education, and service robots for business solutions.

Details

Date: 4th October 2019
Time: 15:45
Location: Aula, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan, Amsterdam, Netherlands