Vieri Giuliano Santucci (ISTC-CNR) presented some of the advancements of the PILLAR-Robots project at the 20th annual conference of the Italian Association for Cognitive Sciences (AISC). 

The conference was organized by the University La Sapienza of Rome and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC) of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR), and was held at the Department of Philosophy of Sapienza University from September 18th to September 20th, 2024.

For further information, the website of the conference can be found here https://aisc2024.istc.cnr.it/, while the detailed program and the abstracts of the talks can be found here https://aisc2024.istc.cnr.it/program/ 

The 20th AISC Conference was focused on the impact of recent advancements in artificial intelligence on the human mind. Psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists, and researchers from various fields interested in the multidisciplinary area of Cognitive Sciences converged to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on cognitive and learning processes, as well as societal impacts and ethical issues related to the development of new technologies.

During his talk, entitled “Synthesizing autonomy: from biology to robots and back”, Vieri Giuliano Santucci introduced the PILLAR-Robots project describing both its goals and its current advancements. In particular, given the general aim of the conference, he focused on the role played by the concept of Purpose, and how it can be operationalised and implemented in artificial agents. Some examples were presented, showing how the outputs of PILLAR-Robots will pave the way for a new generation of autonomous agents able to balance their autonomy with the necessity to align with human designers and final users.