Robotics

The word semantics, in robotics and AI, has no canonical definition. It usually serves to denote additional data provided to autonomous agents to aid HRI. Most researchers seem, implicitly, to understand that such data cannot simply be extracted from environmental data. I try to make explicit why this is so and argue that so-called semantics are best understood as data comprised of conventions of human behaviour. This includes labels, most obviously, but also places, ontologies, and affordances. Object affordances are especially (...) problematic because they require not only semantics that are not in the environmental data (conventions of object use) but also an understanding of physics and object combinations that would, if achieved, constitute artificial superintelligence. (shrink)

The potential capacity for robots to deceive has received considerable attention recently. Many papers focus on the technical possibility for a robot to engage in deception for beneficial purposes (e.g. in education or health). In this short experimental paper, I focus on a more paradigmatic case: Robot lying (lying being the textbook example of deception) for nonbeneficial purposes as judged from the human point of view. More precisely, I present an empirical experiment with 399 participants which explores the following three (...) questions: (i) Are ordinary people willing to ascribe intentions to deceive to artificial agents? (ii) Are they as willing to judge a robot lie as a lie as they would be when human agents engage in verbal deception? (iii) Do they blame a lying artificial agent to the same extent as a lying human agent? The response to all three questions is a resounding yes. This, I argue, implies that robot deception and its normative consequences deserve considerably more attention than it presently attracts. (shrink)

Information and meaning exist around us and within ourselves, and the same information can correspond to different meanings. This is true for humans and animals, and is becoming true for robots. We propose here an overview of this subject by using a systemic tool related to meaning generation that has already been published (C. Menant, Entropy 2003). The Meaning Generator System (MGS) is a system submitted to a constraint that generates a meaningful information when it receives an incident information that (...) has a relation with the constraint. The content of the meaningful information is explicited, and its function is to trigger an action that will be used to satisfy the constraint of the system. The MGS has been introduced in the case of basic life submitted to a "stay alive" constraint. We propose here to see how the usage of the MGS can be extended to more complex living systems, to humans and to robots by introducing new types of constraints, and integrating the MGS into higher level systems. The application of the MGS to humans is partly based on a scenario relative to the evolution of body self-awareness toward self-consciousness that has already been presented (C. Menant, Biosemiotics 2003, and TSC 2004). The application of the MGS to robots is based on the definition of the MGS applied to robots functionality, taking into account the origins of the constraints. We conclude with a summary of this overview and with themes that can be linked to this systemic approach on meaning generation. (shrink)

the development of machines with motor, perceptual and cognitive skills once found only in animals and humans. The field parallels and has adopted developments from several areas, among them mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence, but adds its own gripping myth, of complete artificial mechanical human beings. Ancient images and figurines depicting animals and humans can be interpreted as steps towards this vision, as can mechanical automata from classical times on. The pace accelerated rapidly in the twentieth century with the development (...) of electronic sensing and amplification that permitted automata to sense and react as well as merely perform. By the late twentieth century automata controlled by computers could also think and remember. (shrink)

Friendship is an important part of the good life. While many roboticists are eager to create friend-like robots, many philosophers and ethicists are concerned. They argue that robots cannot really be our friends. Robots can only fake the emotional and behavioural cues we associate with friendship. Consequently, we should resist the drive to create robot friends. In this article, I argue that the philosophical critics are wrong. Using the classic virtue-ideal of friendship, I argue that robots can plausibly be considered (...) our virtue friends - that to do so is philosophically reasonable. Furthermore, I argue that even if you do not think that robots can be our virtue friends, they can fulfil other important friendship roles, and can complement and enhance the virtue friendships between human beings. (shrink)

In this philosophical exploration, we investigate the concept of robotic moral environment interaction. The common view understands moral interaction to occur between agents endowed with ethical and interactive capacities. However, recent developments in moral philosophy argue that moral interaction also occurs in relation to the environment. Here conditions and situations of the environment contribute to human moral cognition and the formation of our moral experiences. Based on this philosophical position, we imagine robots interacting as moral environments—a novel conceptualization of human–robot (...) moral interaction with an inherent capacity for moral augmentation. To explicate this idea, we first define moral environments as moral systems providing moral affordances. We then intuit and explicate two constitutive conditions of moral environments: the environment’s moral ambiance and its moral atmosphere and compare them with real-life cases of moral environments—the moral landmarks. Based on these explications, we construct several explanatory cases to illustrate robots interacting as moral environments. Lastly, we set to evaluate the ethical challenges and wider social ramifications of using moral environment robots in the public space. (shrink)

Although social robots are achieving increasing prominence as companions and carers, their status as partners in an interactive relationship with humans remains unclear. The present paper explores this issue, first, by considering why social robots cannot truly qualify as “Thous”, that is, as surrogate human partners, as they are often assumed to be, and then by briefly considering why it will not do to construe them as mere machines, slaves, or pets, as others have contended. Having concluded that none of (...) these familiar designations does justice to social robots’ still evolving and yet-to-be-defined status, I go on to consider whether engaging in a “relational turn” which prioritises the relationship over the entities in relation, can provide a more satisfactory alternative. In defending this stance, Damiano and Dumouchel contend that in addition to foregrounding the possibility that social robots constitute new types of artificial companions which we can find “companionable in different ways”, the relational turn has the added advantage of providing a more expansive and productive ethical framework for future research and development in this domain. But on balance, it is far from clear that this approach can circumvent the so-called “dummy-human” problem, the contention that social robots are little more than sophisticated toys with the potential to deceive their users about the prospects for genuine partnership and bonding. Accordingly, I conclude that while Damiano and Dumouchel’s shift in “target phenomenology” brings to the fore facets of the interaction that may be difficult to infer by focussing on the relata alone, it is ultimately too “thin” to qualify as a template for robust human-robotic interaction of the sort that could qualify as a genuine partnership. Hence, while their relational turn has its merits in alerting us to the novel possibilities and challenges afforded by this ever-evolving technology and to the limitations of existing frameworks, it is contended that in itself it cannot provide an adequate template for conceptualising what a genuine human–robot partnership might entail. Instead, we need a more expansive approach that can do greater justice to the complexities of human-robotic interaction in its continuities as well as differences from more familiar human prototypes. (shrink)

Robots are slowly, but certainly, entering people's professional and private lives. They require the attention of regulators due to the challenges they present to existing legal frameworks and the new legal and ethical questions they raise. This paper discusses four major regulatory dilemmas in the field of robotics: how to keep up with technological advances; how to strike a balance between stimulating innovation and the protection of fundamental rights and values; whether to affirm prevalent social norms or nudge social norms (...) in a different direction; and, how to balance effectiveness versus legitimacy in techno-regulation. The four dilemmas are each treated in the context of a particular modality of regulation: law, market, social norms, and technology as a regulatory tool; and for each, we focus on particular topics? such as liability, privacy, and autonomy? that often feature as the major issues requiring regulatory attention. The paper then highlights the role and potential of the European framework of rights and values, responsible research and innovation, smart regulation and soft law as means of dealing with the dilemmas. (shrink)

Bringing human–robot interaction (HRI) into conversation with scholarship from human geography, this paper considers how socially interactive robots become important agents in the production of social space and explores the utility of core geographic concepts of _scale_ and _place_ to critically examine evolving robotic spatialities. The paper grounds this discussion through reflections on a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project studying the development and deployment of interactive museum tour-guiding robots on a North American university campus. The project is a collaboration among geographers, (...) roboticists, a digital artist, and the directors/curators of two museums, and involves experimentation in the development of a tour-guiding robot with a “socially aware navigation system” alongside ongoing critical reflection into the socio-spatial context of human–robot interactions and their future possibilities. The paper reflects on the tensions between logics of control and contingency in robotic spatiality and argues that concepts of scale and place can help reflect on this tension in a productive way while calling attention to a broader range of stakeholders who should be included in robotic design and deployment. (shrink)

Background As health education robots may potentially become a significant support force in nursing practice in the future, it is imperative to adhere to the European Union’s concept of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) and deeply reflect on the ethical risks hidden in the process of intelligent robotic health education. Aim This study explores the perceptions of professional nursing professionals regarding the potential ethical risks associated with the clinical practice of intelligent robotic health education. Research design This study adopts a (...) descriptive phenomenological approach, employing Colaizzi’s seven-step method for data analysis. Participants and research context We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 nursing professionals from tertiary comprehensive hospitals in China. Ethical considerations This study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Jiangsu Provincial Second Chinese Medicine Hospital. Findings Nursing personnel, adhering to the principles of RRI and the concept of “person-centered” care, have critically reflected on the potential ethical risks inherent in robotic health education. This reflection has primarily identified six themes: (a) threats to human dignity, (b) concerns about patient safety, (c) apprehensions about privacy disclosure, (d) worries about implicit burdens, (e) concerns about responsibility attribution, and (f) expectations for social support. Conclusions This study focuses on health education robots, which are perceived to have minimal ethical risks, and provides rich and detailed insights into the ethical risks associated with robotic health education. Even seemingly safe health education robots elicit significant concerns among professionals regarding their safety and ethics in clinical practice. As we move forward, it is essential to remain attentive to the potential negative impacts of robots and actively address them. (shrink)

Informed by scholarship in dance studies, this essay examines the popular phenomenon of the dancing robot. It begins with an analysis of social robotics experiments that use techniques of contemporary experimental theater to frame human–robot interactions. With elements of theater history in mind, it becomes evident that such experimental designs fruitfully destabilize common understandings of social robots, theatrical performance, and dance movement. This sets up a discussion of a co-creative approach to developing robot choreography which utilizes compositional techniques from experimental (...) dance to, among other things, avoid cultural appropriation. Taken together, these points show that, because dance movement is culturally laden, scholarship in dance studies should be considered when designing dancing robots. (shrink)

A humanoid robot named ‘Sophia’ has sparked controversy since it has been given citizenship and has done media performances all over the world. The company that made the robot, Hanson Robotics, has touted Sophia as the future of artificial intelligence. Robot scientists and philosophers have been more pessimistic about its capabilities, describing Sophia as a sophisticated puppet or chatbot. Looking behind the rhetoric about Sophia’s citizenship and intelligence and going beyond recent discussions on the moral status or legal personhood of (...) AI robots, we analyse the performativity of Sophia from the perspective of what we call ‘political choreography’: drawing on phenomenological approaches to performance-oriented philosophy of technology. This paper proposes to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography that boosts the rise of the social robot market, rather than a statement about robot citizenship or artificial intelligence. We argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were choreographed to advance specific political interests. We illustrate our philosophical discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, which helps us to explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle functions hand in hand with advancing the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors. Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the movement of robots, we also criticize the notion of ‘embodied intelligence’ used in the context of social robotics and AI. In this way, we put the discussions about the robot’s rights or citizenship in the context of AI politics and economics. (shrink)

Considerable progress is being made in robotics, with robots being developed for many different areas of life: there are service robots, industrial robots, transport robots, medical robots, household robots, sex robots, exploration robots, military robots, and many more. As robot development advances, an intriguing question arises: should robots also encompass religious functions? Religious robots could be used in religious practices, education, discussions, and ceremonies within religious buildings. This article delves into two pivotal questions, combining perspectives from philosophy and religious studies: (...) can and should robots have religious functions? Section 2 initiates the discourse by introducing and discussing the relationship between robots and religion. The core of the article (developed in Sects. 3 and 4) scrutinizes the fundamental questions: can robots possess religious functions, and should they? After an exhaustive discussion of the arguments, benefits, and potential objections regarding religious robots, Sect. 5 addresses the lingering ethical challenges that demand attention. Section 6 presents a discussion of the findings, outlines the limitations of this study, and ultimately responds to the dual research question. Based on the study’s results, brief criteria for the development and deployment of religious robots are proposed, serving as guidelines for future research. Section 7 concludes by offering insights into the future development of religious robots and potential avenues for further research. (shrink)

Unfortunately, there are still cases of domestic violence or situations where it is necessary to call for help without arousing the suspicion of the aggressor. In these situations, the help signal devised by the Canadian Women’s Foundation has proven to be effective in reporting a risky situation. By displaying a sequence of hand signals, it is possible to report that help is needed. This work presents a vision-based system that detects this sequence and implements it in a social robot, so (...) that it can automatically identify unwanted situations and alert the authorities. The gesture recognition pipeline presented in this work is integrated into a cognitive architecture used to generate behaviours in robots. In this way, the robot interacts with humans and is able to detect if a person is calling for help. In that case, the robot will act accordingly without alerting the aggressor. The proposed vision system uses the MediaPipe library to detect people in an image and locate the hands, from which it extracts a set of hand landmarks that identify which gesture is being made. By analysing the sequence of detected gestures, it can identify whether a person is performing the distress hand signal with an accuracy of 96.43%. (shrink)

Abstract: One approach to alignment with human values in AI and robotics is to engineer artiTicial systems isomorphic with human beings. The idea is that robots so designed may autonomously align with human values through similar developmental processes, to realize project ideal conditions through iterative interaction with social and object environments just as humans do, such as are expressed in narratives and life stories. One persistent problem with human value orientation is that different human beings champion different values as ideal, (...) meaning that the values to which an AI should be aligned are ambiguous. Prior work considered human development of purpose and source of meaning in life in terms of project ideal conditions, in effect establishing lifelong value orientations according to which intermediate situations are evaluated. The present work compares views on motivating values from St. Augustine and from popular cognitive science. These accounts are described as divergent error theories which present to their proponents as mutually exclusive yet accurate accounts of personal experience due to differential development of variable innate potentials. SpeciTically, the hypothesis proposed is that differential development of spindle neural projections establishes enduring connections between prior established relatively immediate routine processes entrained during childhood and prioritized in popular cognitive science, and later developing higher-level social and self-processes entrained during adolescence and emphasized in Augustine's account, with these projections hard-wiring lifelong motivating value orientations more or less inaccessible to modiTication through material interaction. Robot experiments informed by this study may evaluate variable value orientation by design, with for example autonomous robots developing motivating associations with temporally distal project ideal conditions through love for humanity, as described by Augustine, and others pursuing adaptive Tit to passing norms consistent with popular contemporary accounts. (shrink)

Sex robots are already a reality: in this provocative text, Maurizio Balistreri explores the fascinating world of future sex, exploring the ethical questions raised by the existence of a sex robot industry.

An essential requirement for increasing human confidence in computer systems is knowing an event’s origin. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient method to record such information. It is especially challenging in robotics, where unexpected behaviours can have unpredictable consequences, endangering the interests of people or even their safety. Furthermore, to analyse an incident’s cause or anticipate future behaviours, we must identify the events that cause a specific action. Although it is common to use logging systems for such purposes, (...) issues such as partial recording of events, unhelpful data or the impact on robot performance suggest conceiving new accountability solutions that assist when determining the responsible entities or the provenance of specific information. This paper presents a general-purpose approach to developing an accountability system for autonomous robots. It consists of four main components: a system event logger, a message producer, a distributed event streaming platform and a database. Our proposal is completely decoupled from the monitored system and allows real-time analysis, improving flexibility, besides system protection and transparency. Finally, the need to reduce the impact of the audit process and logging tasks on robot performance has promoted the development of different assessment scenarios to determine the best strategy for providing accounting services. (shrink)

Emergency response times play a critical role in saving lives, especially in urban settings where traffic congestion and unpredictable events can delay ambulance arrivals. This paper explores a novel framework for smart route optimization for emergency vehicles, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and dynamic traffic analytics. We propose a real-time adaptive routing system that integrates machine learning (ML) for predictive modeling and IoT-enabled communication with traffic infrastructure. The system is evaluated using simulated urban environments, achieving a (...) 35% reduction in response times compared to traditional methods. This work lays the foundation for future advancements in intelligent emergency systems and their integration into smart cities. (shrink)

This Commentary critiques Paul Showler’s combination view of robot moral status, which combines sophisticated cognitive capacities like consciousness with highly valued machine-human relationships. Showler holds that a combined approach carries the advantage of more fully accounting for ordinary folk psychology views about of what it means to have moral standing and be a person. This commentary paper is largely sympathetic to Showler, but argues for a stronger view: being a person is a cluster concept that can include a combination of (...) different possible sufficient conditions, none of which is necessary. What must be constrained, then, is the strong claim that a quality is necessary for personhood. Since most approaches that appeal to sophisticated cognitive capacities make the strong claim, they require constraint. Since most approaches that appeal to highly valued relationships, do not make the stronger claim, they generally do not require constraint. (shrink)

Research in the area of intellectual property (IP) is increasingly relevant to the rapidly growing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics industries, affecting the legal, business, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors. This contributed volume aims to develop our understanding of the legal and ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence and robotics technologies and the appropriate intellectual property based legal and regulatory responses. It provides a philosophical and legal framework for considering concepts and principles that relate to the development and use of such (...) technologies at the international, regional, and national levels. The legal discourse in IP concerns the ever-growing AI sector and how businesses can protect their IP and incorporate AI. Moral sentiments often take a back seat to market sentiments, even in shaping the direction of ethical business strategy. This anomaly persists despite growing interest in ethics and IP. Taking an interdisciplinary and diverse perspective, this book enriches the evolving definition and scope of IP literature by focusing on actors, products and regulation that shape the business sector. Considering the gap between theory and practice, this book bridges academic and professional knowledge in unpacking legal, ethical and governance issues in the intellectual property industry. In an effort to include as many viewpoints as possible, contributions have been gathered from diverse fields, including business, ethics, governance, law, philosophy and technology studies. This book will appeal to academics in the field of intellectual property, business ethics, AI, emerging technologies and strategic innovation, as well as practitioners and policy makers. (shrink)

Controversy arose when a humanoid robot named “Sophia” was given citizenship and did performances all over the world. Why should some robots gain citizenship? Going beyond recent discussions in robot ethics and human–robot interaction, and drawing on phenomenological approaches to political philosophy, actor-network theory, and performance-oriented philosophy of technology, we propose to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography: we argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were politically choreographed to advance economic interests. (...) Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the performance and movement of robots and illustrating our discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, we explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle and robotic performance advanced the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors. (shrink)

This chapter explores the question of whether robots can make gestures that can be described as related to the intentionality of the robots themselves and not to the intentionality of their designers. For this exploration, robots are approached as entities designed by humans. Dennett’s stance framework is adopted for analysing descriptions of robot gestures and this framework is generalised to one in which not only single stances can be used to describe robots, but also pair of stances where one is (...) applied to the robot and one to its designers. Conclusions are that Dennett’s framework warrants descriptions of robot gestures in terms of robot intentionality and does more often so as compared to more fundamental approaches to agency in which it should be first determined that robots have agency. Yet, in the case of robots displaying unexcepted gestures, more fundamental approaches may warrant descriptions of robot gestures in terms of robot intentionality that cannot be adopted on Dennett’s approach. (shrink)

An interesting application for social robots is to act as a presenter, for example as a museum guide. In this paper, we present a fully automated system architecture for building adaptive presentations for embodied agents. The presentation is generated from a knowledge graph, which is also used to track the grounding state of information, based on multimodal feedback from the user. We introduce a novel way to use large-scale language models (GPT-3 in our case) to lexicalise arbitrary knowledge graph triples, (...) greatly simplifying the design of this aspect of the system. We also present an evaluation where 43 participants interacted with the system. The results show that users prefer the adaptive system and consider it more human-like and flexible than a static version of the same system, but only partial results are seen in their learning of the facts presented by the robot. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and robots approach autonomous decision-making, debates about how to assign moral responsibility have gained importance, urgency, and sophistication. Answering Stenseke’s (2022a) call for scaffolds that can help us classify views and commitments, we think the current debate space can be represented hierarchically, as answers to key questions. We use the resulting taxonomy of five stances to differentiate—and defend—what is known as the “blank check” proposal. According to this proposal, a person activating a robot could (...) willingly make themselves answerable for whatever events ensue, even if those events stem from the robot’s autonomous decision(s). This blank check solution was originally proposed in the context of automated warfare (Champagne & Tonkens, 2015), but we extend it to cover all robots. We argue that, because moral answerability in the blank check is accepted voluntarily and before bad outcomes are known, it proves superior to alternative ways of assigning blame. We end by highlighting how, in addition to being just, this self-initiated and prospective moral answerability for robot harm provides deterrence that the four other stances cannot match. (shrink)

Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agentsper se, but asdepictionsof social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a class consist of (...) three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. With social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents – the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models. (shrink)

I here consider the reasonableness of punishing future autonomous military robots. I argue that it is an engineering desideratum that these devices be responsive to moral considerations as well as human criticism and blame. Additionally, I argue that someday it will be possible to build such machines. I use these claims to respond to the no subject of punishment objection to deploying autonomous military robots, the worry being that an “accountability gap” could result if the robot committed a war crime. (...) (Sparrow 2007). But these robots will be blameworthy and morally responsible for their wrongful conduct. I then show that we have reasons to punish them based both on good effects and the impact on the robot, itself. (shrink)

Ce travail examine les revendications contemporaines de droits pour les robots. Il présente les principales formes argumentatives qui ont été développées en faveur d’une considération éthique ou de droits positifs pour ces machines. Il met en relation ces argumentations avec un travail de recherche-action afin de produire un retour critique sur l’idée de droit des robots. Il montre enfin le rapport complexe entre les récits de la modernité et la revendication de droits pour les robots. This article presents contemporary vindications (...) of robot rights. The first part exposes main argumentations in favor of moral consideration or legal personhood for robots. The second part builds on cooperative action research with several French roboticists and experts in order to evaluate these arguments. These dialogues eventually show the complex relationships between the narratives of modernity and the vindication of robot rights. (shrink)

The status and functioning of shame is contested in moral psychology. In much of anglophone philosophy and psychology, it is presumed to be largely destructive, while in Confucian philosophy and many East Asian communities, it is positively associated with moral development. Recent work in human-robot interaction offers a unique opportunity to investigate how shame functions while controlling for confounding variables of interpersonal interaction. One research program suggests a Confucian strategy for using robots to rebuke participants, but results from experiments with (...) educational technologies imply a different and potentially opposing account of shame’s role in personal development. By digging deeper into the details of Confucian theorizing about shame, I identify a unifying explanation for these apparently conflicting results. I conclude by offering suggestions for future empirical research in human-robot interactions to further investigate shame’s role in moral development. (shrink)

To advance the task of designing robots capable of performing collective tasks with humans, studies in human–robot interaction often turn to psychology, philosophy of mind and neuroscience for inspiration. In the same vein, this chapter explores how the notion of recognition and commitment can help confront some of the current problems in addressing robot-human interaction in joint tasks. First, we argue that joint actions require mutual recognition, which cannot be established without the attribution and maintenance of commitments. Second, we argue (...) that commitments require affective states such as social motivations or shared emotions. Finally, we conclude by assessing three possible proposals for how social robotics could implement an architecture of commitments by taking such an affective components into consideration. (shrink)

Do people hold robots responsible for their actions? While Clark and Fischer present a useful framework for interpreting social robots, we argue that they fail to account for people's willingness to assign responsibility to robots in certain contexts, such as when a robot performs actions not predictable by its user or programmer.

ABSTRACT: Social robots are increasingly being deployed to address social isolation and loneliness, particularly among older adults. Clips on social media attest that individuals availing themselves of this option are pleased with their robot companions. Yet, some people find the use of social robots to meet fundamental human emotional needs disturbing. This article clarifies and critically evaluates this response. It sets forth a framework for loneliness, which characterizes one kind of loneliness as involving an affective experience of lacking human relations (...) that provide certain social goods. Next, the article discusses social robots and critically reviews the literature on the ethics of using them in light of this loneliness characterization. Third, we present a normative argument connecting the philosophical critique of loneliness-as-absence with the design and deployment of social robots. Finally, we draw out the implications of our analysis for public health and for interrogating the aims of commercial companies who make social robots. (shrink)

Advancements in artificial intelligence and (social) robotics raise pertinent questions as to how these technologies may help shape the society of the future. The main aim of the chapter is to consider the social and conceptual disruptions that might be associated with social robots, and humanoid social robots in particular. This chapter starts by comparing the concepts of robots and artificial intelligence and briefly explores the origins of these expressions. It then explains the definition of a social robot, as well (...) as the definition of humanoid robots. A key notion in this context is the idea of anthropomorphism: the human tendency to attribute human qualities, not only to our fellow human beings, but also to parts of nature and to technologies. This tendency to anthropomorphize technologies by responding to and interacting with them as if they have human qualities is one of the reasons why social robots (in particular social robots designed to look and behave like human beings) can be socially disruptive. As is explained in the chapter, while some ethics researchers believe that anthropomorphization is a mistake that can lead to various forms of deception, others — including both ethics researchers and social roboticists — believe it can be useful or fitting to treat robots in anthropomorphizing ways. The chapter explores that disagreement by, among other things, considering recent philosophical debates about whether social robots can be moral patients, that is, whether it can make sense to treat them with moral consideration. Where one stands on this issue will depend either on one’s views about whether social robots can have, imitate, or represent morally relevant properties, or on how people relate to social robots in their interactions with them. Lastly, the chapter urges that the ethics of social robots should explore intercultural perspectives, and highlights some recent research on Ubuntu ethics and social robots. (shrink)

Clark and Fischer's depiction hypothesis is based on examples of western mimetic art. Yet social robots do not depict social interactions, but instead perform them. Similarly, dance and performance art do not rely on depiction. Kinematics and expressivity are better predictors of dance aesthetics and of effective social interactions. In this way, social robots are more like dancers than actors.

As robots increasingly find their way into the various spheres of human life, the question of religious robots becomes relevant. This article examines from a Catholic-Christian theological perspective whether robots can be used for religious purposes, and it asks how this may be done and what issues are important to consider. In addition, the study contributes to research on the theological engagement with robotics. It is argued that the use of religious robotics dif- fers significantly depending on the specific religion. (...) From a Christian perspective, the use of religious robotics is fundamentally plausible, especially since a wide variety of entities are used as religious media or representations of the divine. However, the use of religious robotics will ultimately be decided by different concepts (e.g. human, life), religious doctrines and culturally transmitted and subjective attitudes. This article places particular focus on the design of reli- gious robotics. It becomes clear that the reasons for accepting religious technology do not lie in the technology itself but in phenomenological preferences and various time- and culture-de- pendent ideas and concepts. It is likely that as robotics rapidly advances and our relationship with it develops, the use of religious robots also will change. Puzio, Anna: Robot Theology: On Theological Engagement with Robotics and Religious Robots. In: Puzio, Anna/Kunkel, Nicole/Klinge, Hendrik (Hg.): Alexa, wie hältst du es mit der Religion? Theologische Zugänge zu Technik und Künstlicher Intelligenz (Theologie und KI 1). Darmstadt: wbg 2023, S. 95–113. DOI: 10.53186/1030373. (shrink)

The logical problem of artificial intelligence—the question of whether the notion sometimes referred to as ‘strong’ AI is self-contradictory—is, essentially, the question of whether an artificial form of life is possible. This question has an immediately paradoxical character, which can be made explicit if we recast it (in terms that would ordinarily seem to be implied by it) as the question of whether an unnatural form of nature is possible. The present paper seeks to explain this paradoxical kind of possibility (...) by arguing that machines can share the human form of life and thus acquire human mindedness, which is to say they can be intelligent, conscious, sentient, etc. in precisely the way that a human being typically is. (shrink)

Why is it that people simultaneously treat social robots as mere designed artefacts, yet show willingness to interact with them as if they were real agents? Here, we argue that Dennett's distinction between the intentional stance and the design stance can help us to resolve this puzzle, allowing us to further our understanding of social robots as interactive depictions.

In this paper we examine how the use of robots in caring for elders can impact the meaningfulness of elders’ lives. We present a framework for understanding ‘meaningfulness in life’, and then apply that framework in discussing ways in which the use of robots to assist in activities of daily living can preserve, enhance or undermine the meaningfulness of elders’ lives. We conclude with a discussion of if and how having false beliefs about companion robots can affect meaningfulness in the (...) life of the person having those false beliefs. (shrink)

Sex robots are already a reality: in this provocative text, Maurizio Balistreri explores the fascinating world of future sex, exploring the ethical questions raised by the existence of a sex robot industry.

A crucial philosophical problem of social robots is how much they perform a kind of sociality in interacting with humans. Scholarship diverges between those who sustain that humans and social robots cannot by default have social interactions and those who argue for the possibility of an asymmetric sociality. Against this dichotomy, we argue in this paper for a holistic approach called “Δ phenomenology” of HSRI. In the first part of the paper, we will analyse the semantics of an HSRI. This (...) is what leads a human being to assign or receive a meaning of sociality by interacting with a social robot. Hence, we will question the ontological structure underlying HSRIs, suggesting that HSRIs may lead to a peculiar kind of user alienation. By combining all these variables, we will formulate some final recommendations for an ethics of social robots. (shrink)

Social robots are increasingly developed for the companionship of children. In this article we explore the moral implications of children-robot friendships using the Aristotelian framework of virtue ethics. We adopt a moderate position and argue that, although robots cannot be virtue friends, they can nonetheless enable children to exercise ethical and intellectual virtues. The Aristotelian requirements for true friendship apply only partly to children: unlike adults, children relate to friendship as an educational play of exploration, which is constitutive of the (...) way they acquire and develop virtues. We highlight that there is a relevant difference between the way we evaluate adult-robot friendship compared to children-robot friendship, which is rooted in the difference in moral agency and moral responsibility that generate the asymmetries in the moral status ascribed to adults versus children. We look into the role played by imaginary companions (IC) and personified objects (PO) in children’s moral development and claim that robots, understood as Personified Robotic Objects (PROs), play a similar role with such fictional entities, enabling children to exercise affection, moral imagination and reasoning, thus contributing to their development as virtuous adults. Nonetheless, we argue that adequate use of robots for children’s moral development is conditioned by several requirements related to design, technology and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Value-sensitive design theorists propose that a range of values that should inform how future social robots are engineered. This article explores a new value: digital well-being, and proposes that the next generation of social robots should be designed to facilitate this value in those who use or come into contact with these machines. To do this, I explore how the morphology of social robots is closely connected to digital well-being. I argue that a key decision is whether social robots are (...) designed as embodied or disembodied. After exploring the merits of both approaches, I conclude that, on balance, there are persuasive reasons why disembodied social robots may well fare better with respect to the value of digital well-being. (shrink)