Hugo Simão, LASIGE PhD student, was interviewed by the portuguese newspaper Jornal de Negócios, on 7 November 2024.

Hugo spoke about his two main research projects and his search for ‘Artificial Friends’ for humans, especially the elderly and patients with Alzheimer’s or other diseases and his concerns about ethical robotics with AI, where human value is central to defining the role and function of robots in society.

In the first project, dedicated to Social Robots, and also the subject of Simão’s PhD studies, Hugo is working to propose a model of interaction between humans, robots and AI entities ‘that integrate human values as a basis for the creation and use of robots, ensuring that their actions reflect the intentions and principles of the people who interact with them, especially the elderly’.

The second project is centred on Artificial Intelligence Agents and is being developed as part of his FCT/Carnegie Mellon (CMU) double degree doctoral scholarship, which he has held at CMU for two years.

Both projects are entirely academic and Hugo has been supervised by Tiago Guerreiro, LASIGE integrated researcher, Alexandre Bernardino (IST) and Jodi Forlizzi (CMU).

The interview can be read (in Portuguese) here.