ROBOTS FOR GOOD

ATTENDEES: PLEASE SIGN UP TO OUR MIRO BOARD PRIOR TO THE WORKSHOPS TO ENSURE WE CAN START ON TIME.
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We invite you all to join us in our special edition of the ALife for Good Workshop (A4G) - aimed at connecting Artificial Life research with practical issues in human society.

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss how Artificial Life research can benefit both human society and enhance the life of all organisms on the planet. How can our research make direct, concrete contributions towards the sustainability of Earth’s natural ecosystems? How can our research enhance human well-being, raise those living in hardship, and help people to shed disadvantage or difficulty? In short, how can Artificial Life be driven or applied purposefully for social and environmental good? 

The aim for the workshop is the initiation of new means to encourage Artificial Life research towards sustained, positive impact on society with the potential to be felt beyond the field. We will develop ideas for new real world projects, through collaborating with stakeholders working on societal challenges to understand the issues in depth and then exploring together how ALIFE tools and approaches might be able to most effectively connect. Our aim is to both learn more about how ALIFE can be most useful on the ground and to initiate projects that could be meaningful contributions.

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Workshop Schedule:

Session I (Tuesday 20th July @ 10:00-12:00): Idea Generation & Defining the [Real-World] Challenge
In this first session, participants will work together to work through a number of "on-the-ground" challenges or problems presented by external stakeholders. We have four invited external speakers (see below) that will present a number of real-world challenges that they are currently interested in / working on. Participants will then be invited to work together in small groups (on our virtual whiteboard) to explore the specific nature of these problems; and to consider some of the social/economical/political/environmental/technological factors related to them.

Session II (Tuesday 20th July @ 12:30-14:30):  Articulating the [ALife] Connection
In this second session, we will begin to discuss the potential ways in which ALife(rs) can help with solving the challenges discussed in Session I: exploring how we can connect some of these identified problems to the expertise, methods, and skillsets of ALifers . We aim for this session to be full of creative and fruitful group discussion, and to potentially be the starting point for future project ideas and working group(s) to work on the challenges that have been identified.

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Speakers & Proposed Challenge Areas:

Enamul Mazid Khan Siddique, Head of Climate Justice and Natural Resource Rights Oxfam in Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh [web]
social inequality, conflict, human rights abuse, injustice, sustainable ecosystems & climate change

Dr Tom Smith. Managing Director of Data Science Campus at UK Office for National Statistics [web]
Data science for public good