Expert meeting on “Models and Measures for Autonomous Agency”; pending confirmation of the exact date

Autonomy as the agent’s ability to make choices free from external influence is central to modern democratic societies. Governments, lawmakers, and stakeholders are facing demands to classify agents as autonomous, fully autonomous, non-autonomous, in order to regulate their rights and obligations. Whereas the concept of autonomy often refers to human conduct in social context, autonomy is also a key aspect of the behavior of machines in the context of AI. Recent research has made quite some progress in understanding the social, cognitive, and neural underpinnings of human autonomy. Furthermore, research in AI has started to address the importance of autonomy in studying and designing artificial agents in the service of human needs and goals. Despite the relevance of autonomy for human and artificial agents, not much attention has been given to the question of how to map the “human autonomy talk” onto machines, and vice versa.

This expert meeting brings together different research angles on how to model and measure autonomy during a one-day event held in the historical center of Utrecht. The meeting will include researchers from cognitive neuroscience, behavioral science, philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence and engineering.

More information will follow soon.