Robots, Awards and AI

The last couple of weeks has been an exciting time for the members of the Somabotics (RAKE and RAI UK) team. We had been shortlisted in categories for 3 awards as part of the AI & Robotics Research Awards, held at the prestigious Royal Society. For us this was a real opportunity to meet colleagues, project partners and discuss our ongoing research. Steve Benford (Turing Fellow) also gave a keynote, discussing the Cat Royale project, amongst others, and posing questions about improvisation, ethics, embodiment, control, robotics and AI.

On to the Royal Academy of Engineering

The following day we went a couple of doors up to the Royal Academy of Engineering. This time we were invited to the “Doing AI Differently” event, which brought together an international group of academics, research organisations and UK funders to look at the intersection of the Humanities and AI.  There were a series of talks, panels and discussions throughout the day to highlight differing points relating back to the Humanities and AI. Steve also presented some ongoing Somabotics research, based around AI and Music (with our partners in Sweden and Eire) as part of the Advancing Human-AI Ensembles session.  Some of this made me reflect on how our research from the Mixed Reality Lab, School of Computer Science at University of Nottingham has always had a qualitative slant. A lot of our research could be seen as Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and this has always been an interdisciplinary area, heavily influenced by ethnography and critical understandings, with research being carried out in domains which have ranged from games, art, medicine, music and economics. So, I was quite excited to see this sort of alignment with the way that the presenters were discussing their work. It made me reflect on our expertise in AI, Robotics and Embodiment (check out our Cobot Maker Space). I was also mulling on some initial research that I’d been doing around Pain (a very human concern) and Robotics, and the ways that this directly linked into archives, medicine, art, literature and theology. In the proceeding days I’d discussed this with one of Blast Theory, a Digital Humanities Scholar from Oxford, and a theologian in Aberystwyth. I’m also reading this book, so I’d got a few things that where still being processed at the front of my mind.

I’m not going to say too much about this, but I really liked the approach and focus of the day – particularly as it lends itself to being able to write proposals that could be very focused on specific research issues and humanities-based concerns. Currently there’s a lot of work in AI the Digital Arts (particularly around Generative AI, Law and the thorny issue of copyright at the moment), but not so much that focuses on the Humanities based discourses and their influence on AI. I also think that the international approach which was put forwards is a good way to go, and it was great to hear Dr Allan Sudlow discuss this.

Identifying Gaps

As part of the session, we were asked to identify gaps when we thought about the Humanities and AI. A huge task when we think about the size of the Humanities as a research area and the disciplines it spans. Some of these things might be practical, whereas others might be more methodological, or policy driven. Here are a few thoughts and things that I heard raised.

Socio-economics and Authenticity: Having read through various reports (check out the great work by PEC), it’s important, particularly in the Humanities (and regarding policy and regulation) to both engage with, and as part of a research team to have people who are representative of the general UK population. I’d like to see socio-economic status used as a focus for public engagement, and as something that is thought about when developing research teams. This would ensure authenticity, responsible representation and ensure that people were given a voice. As we know there are issues around representation in relation to this (socio-economics) in the Arts and Humanities, creating content and engagement.

UK Regional Representation and Culture: Again, if we are going to take an approach that places the Humanities at the centre of innovation and research, we need to appreciate regional understandings, language and culture. Rural Wales, the Welsh language (over half million speakers), Rural Scotland and Northern Ireland need to be represented in order that regional differences are understood (along with the West and East Midlands, and so on). It is important to think about the ways that funders and organisation deal with culture in a responsible way. As many people have highlighted, these days there is no need to have a metropolitan, capital focus. Digital services can be delivered anywhere at any time. If AI is seen as disruptive (in a positive way) perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to put strategy and policy in place to ensure that there is a fair regionally focused approach. In turn this may be able to address the particular real-world foci that those countries have identified.

An Emphasis on Humanities: The emphasis on the Humanities, can be key to delivering understandings and feed into innovation in a way that other research approaches don’t. This doesn’t need to be digital or technologically driven. In many respects this somewhat misses the point. It is the human understanding, approaches and ways of thinking about people, culture and society that enable us think about and examine things critically. It’s not about qualitative vs quantitative, it’s about appreciating the human condition, and the culture/s that we both exist in and form. Is there a space to enable existing AHRC projects (not focused in AI or tech) to have input into these discourses? Although my own work straddles tech/humanities, in the past I’ve learnt a lot from projects such as the Anglo Norman Dictionary, especially in the context of our Arts, Humanities and Responsible AI Symposium that we ran in 2024, the Hybrid Relics project, and from the people that attended our Theatre, AI and Ludic Technologies Network (AHRC nTAIL) events.

New careers and teams-based approaches to research: I was really pleased to hear this raised, especially with the current focus on Research Culture and Environment, and issues around precarity of employment for Research Staff (who are predominantly employed as Research Associates and Fellows). How do we support and develop more inclusive approaches to enable career researchers (Research Associates and Fellows – Research Staff, sometimes known as Postdocs) to develop their careers? I purposefully don’t use the term ECR as it means different things to different people and excludes some career researchers. In the Sciences, Engineering and Medicine there have traditionally been longer term careers for research-only staff. From a personal perspective, it would be great to see Research Fellows supported, taking lead roles, getting mentored and leading some of the research. Developing an inclusive responsible approach to research means that there could be genuine opportunities for people in the UK developing careers in research.

Sustainability: How do we develop new ways of working internationally that don’t have a negative impact upon the environment, and implement this as part of Responsible Research? Can we use low impact systems and services that are leading the way in this respect?

Open access tools, data and content: If we are going to be developing tools, using content and creating content and data, then it would make sense for the content, tools, data and models to be made fully open and be supported post project. I think that this is important, as it engages people beyond and during the life of the project, creates impact, offers economic value and gives practitioners and the public tools to work with. In my own practice I’ve found this especially important and it has enabled me to develop work that has appeared in the AI Gallery hosted by the National Gallery, to discuss composition, AI and Archives at a British Library event, and perform live at festivals. Perhaps these more open approaches could have an impact upon the economy and innovation beyond the creative industries and humanities.

After meeting people and hearing about different projects and framings, I wondered back via Pall Mall and called in at Philip Mould & Company (Gallery). My wife had been in the day before and said that I should visit. Looking at the pictures and work on display I was drawn to an icon-like painting of Saint Maurice, which made me think about the earlier discussions around theology, robotics and pain, and Thinking through the Body by Shusterman (which influenced the Somabotics Fellowship which Steve leads). How can people create images that imbue feelings in others that are part of culture and belief, do we need technology to appreciate and understand these things, is that just an extension of our humanity that humans have shaped, and how might this relate back to our research looking at aesthetics, AI, robotics and embodiment?

Written by Alan Chamberlain

Recent publications:

Crabtree, A., Lodge, T., Sailaja, N., Chamberlain, A., Coulton, P., Pilling, M., & Forrester, I. (2025).
Experiencing the future mundane: configuring design fiction as breaching experiment. Human–Computer Interaction, 1–30.

Benford, Steve, Glenn McGarry, Adrian Hazzard, Alan Chamberlain, Rebecca Gibson, and Juan Pablo Martinez Avila. 2024.
Augmenting Musical Instruments with Digital Identities.
Journal of New Music Research.

Steve Benford, Clara Mancini, Alan Chamberlain, Eike Schneiders, et al. 2024.
Charting Ethical Tensions in Multispecies Technology Research through Beneficiary-Epistemology Space.
In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24)

Eike Schneiders, Steve Benford, Alan Chamberlain, Clara Mancini, et al. 2024.
Designing Multispecies Worlds for Robots, Cats, and Humans.
In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24)