Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society’s Post

The international symposium 'Caring Machines', fully funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of my Fellowship, took place this week at the Bayes Centre in Edinburgh. The event focused on how we can ensure that #AI and #robotic #technologies in the #health and #care sectors are developed and implemented responsibly. Topics of discussion included AI #ethics, research #integrity, #interdisciplinarity, #inclusivity, #publicengagement, #coproduction, and exploring novel methodologies. I was deeply honoured and delighted to host an incredible lineup of speakers from the UK, Japan, South Korea, and Norway. The feedback from the 50+ attendees has been overwhelmingly positive, and I am sincerely grateful to the speakers and participants for making the event so engaging, inclusive, and thought-provoking. I would also like to thank Prof. Sethu Vijayakumar and the members of the SLMC Group, particularly Saeid Samadi, Elle Miller, Namiko Saito, and Andreas Christou, for kindly offering a tour of their research facilities at the Bayes Centre. The symposium featured a range of distinguished speakers from the fields of Science and Technology Studies (#STS), #Robotics, and #Medicine. Together with the audience, we explored the benefits and challenges of fostering responsible research and innovation (#RRI) in AI and robotics for the health and care sectors. The event concluded with a screening of the South Korean ethnographic documentary 'Hug Me Tight', accompanied by insightful commentary from Heesun Shin and Chihyung Jeon. Special thanks to the Wellcome Trust for making this event possible, to my brilliant colleague Lorna Thompson for her help organising it, and to the speakers: Kristiina Jokinen (Senior Researcher at AI Research Center AIST Tokyo Waterfront) Roger A. Søraa (Professor in STS at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Marcela MUNERA (Associate Professor in Assistive Robotics at the Bristol Robotics Lab) Chihyung Jeon (Associate Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Celia Spoden (Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo) Susan Shenkin (Clinical Academic Geriatrician based at Advanced Care Research Center) Heesun Shin (Ph.D. Candidate at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Aurora Constantin (Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics) Mauro Dragone (Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at Heriot-Watt University) The University of Edinburgh College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine, The University of Edinburgh Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh Bayes Centre Centre for Technomoral Futures Edinburgh Futures Institute Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh