"We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here."

Director of Sheffield Robotics and contributor to our free online course Building a Future with Robots Professor Tony Prescott has written this illuminating article for The Conversation entitled Why watching Westworld's robots should make us question ourselves. In it, Professor Prescott uses the new HBO series Westworld as his basis for discussing how the design of increasingly complex AI must force humanity to look at the morality of creating machines that can, for all intents and purposes, ‘think’ for themselves.



It also reminded us of another article that Professor Prescott wrote last year which bridges the gap between Building a Future With Robots and our most recent free course, The Musculoskeletal System: The Science of Staying Active Into Old Age.

In this article Tony looks at how robotics and developing technologies can aid us as we age; everything from helping with the chores and providing mobility assistance, to designing automatic furniture and combating loneliness.

Along with showcasing the breadth of research taking place at The University of Sheffield, these articles also underline the importance of working in an interdisciplinary way and how academics contribute to a wide range of projects across many subject areas.

Find out more about our open online courses on FutureLearn here.