 Let me tell you a short story an elderly man is lying in a hospital bed in pain and a nurse enters the room with a friendly smile The nurse asks how are you today and the elderly man replies You don't care get out of here stupid Not really a polite response, right? But what if I tell you that the nurse isn't actually a human being but a robot made to care for the elderly? Now perhaps you feel your perspective shifting, but why? My project seeks to explore what it takes for us to see a human What it takes for us to see something as a someone? We appear to be equipped by evolution with a very strong sensitivity towards any sign of a human like social being in Fact these sensitivities are so strong They can even be characterized as a kind of evolutionary button for a sociality Robots are designed to push these buttons and when they do it is exceedingly difficult for us not to feel that this something is actually a someone Even robot engineers cannot help but feel emotionally pulled in towards their own socially responsive creations And if people are told to inflict pain on a cute little robot toy dinosaur that screams and wrinkles in protest They cringe They're highly emotionally affected and even distressed by this Even though some part of them knows that these displays of pain aren't real But the point is that they feel real My project seeks to integrate different lines of research into combined theory About what it is that turns some something into someone It may allow us to create robots that do not generate the kind of resistance we saw in the elderly man But do we want to? The creation of robots that push our social buttons raises a range of ethical questions Because even if they can copy all the appearances of caring behavior, it doesn't change the fact that they don't care But perhaps even more worryingly If the displays of behavior are satisfactory and fulfilling does it even matter to us that they're only an appearance? In any case knowing how something pushes these buttons of ours Gives us the power of choice So now imagine yourself back in the hospital bed as an elderly person. What do you want? We don't want fake news, but do you want fake care? Thank you, Anna Katrina