This week the Centre has welcomed Jema Hewitt, whose research will focus on the ‘Representation of Female Stereotypes in Embodied AI and Robots’.
As humankind moves forward through the generation of increasingly autonomous artificial beings, alarming issues are being raised about the gender bias already developing in AI. Jema will research how far traditionally idealistic female visual representation - typified by aesthetic representation of physical archetypes and fashionable dress - may become responsible for the way we view and interact with robots and embodied AI, when presentation of the self is linked to pre-gendered expectations, and whether this is this likely to alter with an increase of women designers and engineers.
She will focus particularly on social robots (i.e. those which interact with humans); humanoid and non-humanoid comparisons; genderised visual aesthetics of component shapes and the impact of gender stereotyping on genderised aesthetics.