Within HKU’s research project Robotstories | Expanding Narratives, Jorrit Thijn is focusing his PhD research on how to give robots the semblance of an inner subjective experience, comparable to a character in a theatre play or literary work. When such a robot would start a conversation with, to name current practical application, an elderly person with dementia, the interaction could lead to the creation of a robot identity.
Robots with Character
Jorrit was already involved in earlier editions of this project, including an exploration of whether literary narrative techniques could offer opportunities for making a robot more life-like, and enter a real conversation with people who have dementia. The four-year project Robotstories | Expanding Narratives is the current edition of this continuous research project called Robotstories.
Robot identity
In his PhD Jorrit, cooperates on the research with, among others Sander Goetzee, professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Their goal is to investigate how the interaction between elderly with dementia and robots could become meaningful, by engineering a seemingly subjective inner world for the robot: a robot identity. This robot identity would be constructed through both texts written by creative writers and through content generated by AI via the so-called Large Language Models. In addition, a yet-to-be developed authoring tool and identity manager must eventually express the robot’s inner world in the interaction with the elderly person. Both PhD researchers are co-financed by the RAAK-pro regulation from the Taskforce For Applied Research SIA.
Minor Artistic Artificial Intelligence
Students who are interested can also participate in this project. In 2025, the minor Artistic Artificial Intelligence was launched, in which students learn to use AI as a co-creating partner, instead of merely using it as a tool.
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