Autonomous systems are being used in more and more areas of everyday life. These autonomous systems are often referred to as ‘autonomous agents’. These autonomous agents frequently operate in human-like environments. In this context, people have various expectations of autonomous agents.

Autonomous agents are often designed to behave in a human-like manner. This allows them to evolve from a technical application to a social counterpart for their users. This makes interacting with such agents intuitive and therefore accessible to everyone. However, it can also generate overconfidence in these agents if it is no longer clear to users whether they are interacting with a human or a machine.

In this proseminar, we will deal with

• the current state of research (what makes an artificial agent appear human or places it in the ‘uncanny valley’ – i.e. makes it creepy for users?),
• the opportunities and limitations of this development (apps for psychotherapy, care robots, etc.) and
• the ethical implications of this research.

Seminar schedule:
In the first week of lecture time, there will be a meeting where we present the available topics. There will be enough topics to ensure a fair choice. The presentations will be held in a block seminar at the end of the lecture period, and a 5-page paper will be due before the block seminar. In addition, there will be regular sessions offering presentations on academic work.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

In der ersten Vorlesungswoche findet ein Termin statt, bei dem die wählbaren Themen vorgestellt werden. Es werden ausreichend viele Themen gestellt, um eine faire Themenwahl sicherzustellen. Die Vorträge werden in einem Blockserminar am Ende der Vorlesungszeit gehalten und vor dem Blockseminar wird eine etwa 5-Seitige Ausarbeitung abgegeben. Weiterhin wird es zusätzliche, regelmäßige Termine geben, an denen Vorträge zum Wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten angeboten werden.