Robot & Frank – screening and discussion

Robot & Frank – screening and discussion by 'Ethics and Film'

Can robots help us cope with loneliness? What do we want from our relationships with machines? How do we use film to make sense of our changing world?

Join us for an evening of award-winning cinema and thought-provoking discussion with a panel of internationally recognised experts. Dr. Mette Leonard Høeg (the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford), Dr Michael Loizou (Health Technology and Life Sciences, UWE Bristol) University of West England) and Dr Carissa Véliz (Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford) will be discussing themes of AI and loneliness raised by Robot & Frank (Sundance Award Winner, Dir Jake Schreier, 2012).

Ethics and Film is brought to you by the Wellcome Centre for Ethics & Humanities and Reuben College and bridges the gap between the cutting edge of current ethical debates and the human drive to tell stories. The screening starts at 6:15 and will be followed by a half hour Q&A discussion with our panel – free snacks will be provided!

 Panelists

Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed Privacy Is Power (an Economist book of the year, 2020) and the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. She advises policymakers around the world on privacy and the ethics of AI. 

Michael Loizou (Health Technology and Life Sciences, UWE Bristol) Michael has over 20 years of experience in both academia and industry, working with the health sector including the NHS. He has worked on projects in the areas of human machine interaction, digital healthcare, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), robotics, and using mobile technologies for healthcare and wellbeing. He has also managed and owned companies in different industries for which he led the introduction of novel technologies.

Dr. Mette Leonard Høeg (the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford ) is a Carlsberg Foundation Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. She holds a PhD in English from King's College London, is author of Uncertainty and Undecidability in Twentieth-Century Literature and Literary Theory (Routledge 2022) and editor of and contributor to Literary Theories of Uncertainty (Bloomsbury 2021). Her current research is in consciousness studies and ethics with a focus on ego-dissolution, anti-essentialist notions of self and anti-anthropocentrism in literature and fictional narrative. She also works as a literature and film critic and is the literary editor of the Danish news media Frihedsbrevet.