Social AI Through the Looking Glass (7,5 credits)

The course is an introduction to Social Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). It
aims at drawing engaged reflections and theoretical comparisons between how
humans engage in meaningful interactions with other humans and with social robots.
Towards this aim, the course will first provide an overview of the standard and
contrasting accounts of social cognition and its development, spanning from Theory
of Mind, embodied and situated approaches, neural mirroring theories. Mainstream
research paradigms to investigate human-robot interactions will be presented, along
with an overview of the main cognitive architectures and computing techniques
applied in social robotics, such as artificial neural networks and deep networks.
Finally, the course will address some psychological and philosophical critical issues
related with ethical, social and functional aspects in the HRI field.