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Understanding and embracing artificial agents’ impact on the social dynamics of families

Project description

Navigating AI in families

As AI becomes more prevalent in households, it raises questions about its impact on family dynamics. How do we trust, connect, and understand each other when artificial agents are involved? This shift prompts a need to explore the intersection of human psychology, neuroscience, and AI interaction within familial contexts. With this in mind, the ERC-funded F-AI-MILY project aims to develop insights that could shape the future of familial relationships. By studying social cognition at home, F-AI-MILY uncovers nuances in behaviour and brain responses. It also explores how children’s development intersects with AI’s influence, especially in long-term interactions. Furthermore, F-AI-MILY aspires to develop AI systems to support households dealing with chronic illness, fostering adaptive social dynamics.

Objective

How we trust, feel, understand, and connect with family members shapes the well-being of all family members. With families increasingly inviting artificial agents into their life, questions arise how we can describe these dynamics in the age of artificial intelligence. Integrating insights and methods from family psychology, social neuroscience, and human-ai interaction, F-AI-MILY will 1) establish a new group-centred mobile-lab approach to study the neurocognition of family social dynamics, 2) describe the developmental aspects of changes in households’ social dynamic during long-term interactions with artificial agents, and 3) identify how sustainable interactions with artificial agents can provide support in households with chronic illness. First, we will develop a new group-centred mobile lab to study how the key mechanisms of social dynamics, similarity and distance between family members, are impacted by interactions with artificial agents. Using this innovative neurocognition-at-home approach we will measure both behavioural and brain measures of key attitudes and behaviours of all family members and uncover social dynamics with unprecedented detail and clarity. Second, we will test how child development interacts with the impact of artificial agents on social dynamics. Going beyond one-off interactions, we will directly test how long-term living with an artificial agent affects families with children (4-12 years) that differ in their flexibility to the influence of these agent. Third, we will use the neurocognition-at-home approach to guide the development of artificial agents to support vulnerable households. This artificial agent support system targets family coping with chronic illness and aims to change maladaptive to adaptive social dynamics. The innovative, interdisciplinary, and full circle approach of F-AI-MILY offers new ground-breaking vistas on family systems, neurocognition of social behaviour, and the developmental of artificial agents.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 930,00
Address
HEIDELBERGLAAN 8
3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 930,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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