ETHICS AND ROBOTICS

1
ETHICS AND ROBOTICS

• Rafael Capurro
• Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart
• Università di Pisa, 17-18 Maggio 2007
• Luomo e la macchina. Passato e Presente

2
Content

• A. Meta-theoretical Questions
• B. Techno-ethical Issues
• General Background
• Epistemological, ontological, and psychoanalytic
  implications
• Ethical aspects of man-machine relations
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

3
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• From which standpoint do we - as ethicists -
  speak?
• And for whom?
• What are the consequences and what is the
  (potential) field of application of an ethics of
  human interaction with communication, bionic and
  robotic systems (in the following techo-ethics)?

4
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• An important part of it should be an ethics of
  technology design and production.
• Techno-ethics should support strong, contestatory
  democratic practice and citizen activity that is
  involved in the creation of techno-scientific
  artifacts.

5
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• The leading question is how to design an
  interdisciplinary process that also involves
  engineers and technology designers in the ongoing
  discussion.

6
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• A second question is, whether or how is it
  possible (and desirable) to develop a general
  ethics for any kind of robots and agents.
• In which case(s) do we need a differentiation of
  fields of application and types of robots /
  agents with regard to ethical concerns?

7
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• A third question should also be cui bono? For
  whom and by whom are robots developed?
• Who fits the standards that robots and robotic
  devices like AIBO, Pino, Paro, Kismet etc.
  embody?
• Do they contribute to deeper equality, keener
  appreciation of heterogeneous multiplicity, and
  stronger accountability for livable worlds?

8
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• Besides that a reflection on the socio-cultural
  context of the debate on robots and agents is
  needed.

9
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• What kind of societal conflicts and power
  relations are intertwined in the production and
  usage of agents and robots?
• How does the fusion of science, technology,
  industry and politics come into play?
• What about the military interest in robotics and
  agents?

10
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• Last but not least a central task for
  techno-ethics is to learn the lessons from the
  discussion on bioethics.

11
A. Meta-theoretical Questions

• For example We should avoid abstract discussions
  of the agency or intentionality of agents and
  robots and reflect whether they are helpful to
  work out the contest on the future development
  and use of agents and robots.

12
B.Techno-ethical Issues

• 1. General Background
• The massive use of robots will change society
  probably in a similar way as cars and airplanes
  (and in former times ships etc.) did and it
  already changed society think of industrial
  robots in the workplace who are an important
  factor with regard to the growing unemployment in
  Europe.

13
B. Techno-ethical Issues General

• This broad view of societal changes and
  consequently of the view(s) of ourselves,
  including our (moral) values, is fundamental
  There may be a re-definition of what it means to
  be human For instance the EU Charter of Human
  Rights is human centered. The massive use of
  robots may challenge this anthropocentric
  perspective.

14
B.Techno-ethical Issues General

• Why do we want to live with robots? What do we
  live with robots for? There are different levels
  of reflection when answering these questions,
  starting with the trivial one that robots can be
  very useful and indeed indispensable for instance
  in todays industrial production or when dealing
  with situations in which the dangers for humans
  are big. But before reflection in this direction
  let us take the perspective of what René Girard
  calls mimetic desire.

15
B.Techno-ethical Issues

• 2. Epistemological, ontological, and
  psychoanalytic implications
• The relation between humans and robots can be
  conceived as an envy relation in which humans
  either envy robots for what they are or they envy
  other humans for having robots that they do not
  have. In the first case, envy can be positive in
  case the robot is considered either as a model to
  be imitated or negative in case the relationship
  degenerates into rivalry.

16
B.Techno-ethical Issues2. Epistemological

• This last possibility is exemplified in many
  science fiction movies and novels in which robots
  and humans are supposed to compete. Robots are
  then often represented as emotion-free androids,
  lacking moral sense and therefore less worth than
  humans. Counter examples are for instance 2001 A
  Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick 1968) or Stanislaw
  Lems novel Golem XIV (Lem 1981).

17
B.Techno-ethical Issues 2. Epistemological

• The mimetic conflict (René Girard) arises not
  only by the fact of imitating what a robot can do
  but more basically of imitating what it is
  supposed to desire. But a robots desires are
  paradoxically our own since we are the creators.
  The positive and negative views of robots shine
  back into human self-understanding leading to the
  idea of enhancing human capabilities for instance
  by implanting artificial devices in the human
  body.

18
B.Techno-ethical Issues 2. Epistemological

• When robots are used by humans for different
  tasks, this creates a situation in which the
  mimetic desire is articulated either as a
  question of justice (a future robot divide) or as
  new kind of envy. This time the object of envy is
  not the robot itself but the other human
  using/having it.

19
B.Techno-ethical Issues 2. Epistemological

• The foundational ethical dilemma with regard to
  robots is thus not just the question of their
  good or bad use but the question of our relation
  to our own desire with all its creative and
  destructive mimetic dynamism that includes not
  only strategies such as envy, rivalry and model
  but also their trivial use as a tool that
  eventually turns to be a question of social
  justice.

20
B.Techno-ethical Issues 2. Epistemological

• Robots can be seen as masks of human desire. Our
  mimetic desire might influence (but how far?)
  the exchange value they get in the market place.

21
B.Techno-ethical Issues 2. Epistemological

• Our love affair with them opens a double bind
  relationship that includes the whole range of
  human passions, from indifference through
  idealization until rivalry and violence although
  this might not be the case with regard to the
  contemporary state of the art in robotics as they
  lack still much to much intelligence and
  unpredictable behaviour.

22
B.Techno-ethical Issues 2. Epistemological

• It is the task of ethical reflection to go beyond
  the economic dimension, i.e., to discover the
  mechanism that makes possible the invention,
  production, and use of robots of all kinds. This
  mechanism is nothing else than human mimetic
  passion(s) on an individual as well as on a
  societal and global scale.

23
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• In a mythical sense robots are experienced by our
  secularized and technological society as
  scapegoat for what is conceived the humanness of
  humanity whose most high and global expression is
  the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From
  this mythical perspective, robots are the bad and
  the good conscience of ourselves.

24
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• In other words, an ethical reflection on robots
  must take care of these pitfalls particularly
  when considering the dangers of the mimetic
  desire with regard to human dignity, autonomy or
  data protection. It must reflect the double bind
  relationship between humans and robots.

25
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• If robots mirror our mimetic desire we should
  develop individual and social strategies in order
  to unmask the unattainable object we strive for
  that turns into a danger when it looks like a
  fulfilment in view of which everything including
  ourselves should be regarded as mean to an end.

26
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• The concept of human dignity is a hallmark above
  and beyond our own desire. It is a hallmark of
  self transcendence independently of technological
  and/or religious promises. It allows us to avoid
  ideological or fundamentalist blockades by
  regulating at the same time the dynamic of
  mimetic desire.

27
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• The concept of robot is ambiguous. According to
  Karel Capek who first coined the term, a robot is
  a human like artificial device, an android, that
  is able to perform autonomously, i.e., without
  permanent human guidance, different kind of tasks
  particularly in the field of industrial
  production. Anthropomorphic robots but also
  artificial devices imitating different kinds of
  living beings have a long tradition. Todays
  industrial robots are often not human like.

28
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• There is a tension between technoid and naturoid
  artificial products Negrotti 1995, 1999, 2002.
  The concept of artificiality itself is related to
  something produced by nature and imitated by man.
  Creating something similar but not identical to a
  natural product points to the fact that anything
  to be qualified as artificial should make a
  difference with regard to the natural or the
  original (Negrotti).

29
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• Robots are mostly conceived as physical agents.
  With the rise of information technology softbots
  or software agents have been developed that have
  also impact in the physical world so that it is
  difficult to draw a clear border.
• This is also the case with regard to the
  hybridization between humans and robots
  (cyborgs).
• In fact, not only individuals but society as a
  whole is concerned with a process of
  cyborgization.

30
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• What are robots? They are products of human
  dreams (Brun 1992, Capurro 1995). Every robotic
  idea entails the hidden object of our desire.
  Robots are thus like the images of the gods
  (Greek agalma) inside the mask of a satyr.

31
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• According to Jacques Lacans psychoanalytic
  interpretation (Lacan 1991), following the
  Platonic narrative of the love encounter between
  Socrates and Alcibiades in the Symposium (Symp.
  222), such small objects are the unattainable
  and impossible goal of human desire.

32
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• Plato describes in the Timaeus the work of the
  demiurge shaping the world as a resemblance
  (agalma) of the divine as a work of joy and
  therefore as an incentive to make the copy more
  similar to the original (parádeigma) (Tim. 37c).

33
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• In sum, our values or the goal of our desire are
  embedded into all our technological devices and
  particularly in the kind of products that mimicry
  our human identity. Therefore, the question is
  not only which values are we trying to realize
  through them but why are we doing this?

34
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• Robots are a mirror of shared cultural values
  that show to us and to others who we want to be.
  We redefine ourselves in comparison with robots
  in a similar way as we redefine ourselves in
  comparison with animals or with gods. Theses
  redefinitions have far-reaching economic and
  cultural implications.

35
B. Techno-ethical issues 2. Epistemological

• But, who is the we of this kind of
  psychoanalytic discourse?
• What about an engineering culture which is mostly
  involved in the development design of robots?
• In gender approaches we have the claim of a
  masculine culture of technology production. Do
  all people have the same kind of double-bind
  relationship to robots?
• And what about cultural differences?

36
B. Techno-ethical issues

• 3. Ethical aspects of man-machine relations
• How do we live in a technological environment?
• What is the impact of robots on society?
• How do we (as users) handle robots?
• What methods and means are used today to model
  the interface between man and machine?

37
B. Techno-ethical issues3. Ethical aspects

• What to think about the mimicry of emotions and
  stereotypes of social norms?
• What kind of language / rhetoric is used in
  describing the problem of agent and bots and
  which one do we want to use?

38
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• In AI and robotics we can often find a sloppy
  usage of language which supports
  anthropomorphising agents. This language often
  implies the intentionality and autonomy of agents
  for example when researcher speak of learning,
  experience, emotion, decision making (and so on)
  of agents.
• How are we in science and in our social practices
  going to handle this problem?

39
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• Robots are not ready-made products of engineers
  and computer scientists but devices and emerging
  technologies in the making.
• What are the consequences of the fact that today
  ICT devices are developed by computer scientists
  and engineers only?
• What is the meaning of the relation master-slave
  with regard to robots?
• What is the meaning of robot as a partner in
  different settings?

40
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• Recent research on social robots is focussing on
  the creation of interactive systems that are able
  to recognise others, interpret gestures and
  verbal expressions, which recognize and express
  emotions and that are capable of social learning.
  
• A central question concerning social robotics is
  how "building such technologies shapes our
  self-understanding, and how these technologies
  impact society" (Breazeal 2002, 5).

41
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• To understand the implications of these
  developments it is important to analyse central
  concepts of social robotics like the social,
  sociality, human nature and human-style
  interactions.

42
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• Main questions are
• What concepts of sociality are translated into
  action by social robotics?
• How is social behaviour conceptualised, shaped,
  or instantiated in software implementation
  processes?
• And what kind of social behaviours do we want to
  shape and implement into artefacts?

43
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• There is a tendency to develop robots modeling
  some aspects of human behavior instead of
  developing an android (Arnall 2003). Relative
  autonomy is a goal for physical robots as well as
  for softbots.
• What is the meaning of the concept of autonomy in
  robotics?
• What are the affinities and differences between
  the robotic discourse and the philosophical
  discourse?

44
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• Obviously, we can experience a strong
  bidirectional travel of the concept of autonomy
  (as well as that of sociality, emotion and
  intelligence) between very diverse discourses and
  disciplines.
• How does the concept transfer between the
  disciplines and especially the strong impact of
  robotics change the traditional meanings of
  concepts like autonomy, sociality, emotion and
  intelligence?

45
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• Having regard to the EU Charter of Fundamental
  Rights, particularly
• Art. 1 Human dignity
• Art. 3 Right to the integrity of the person
• Art. 6 Right to liberty and security
• Art. 8 Protection of personal data
• Art. 25 The rights of the elderly
• Art. 26 Integration of persons with disabilities

46
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• The questions are
• (a) Who is responsible for undesired results of
  actions carried out by human-robot hybrid teams?
• (b) How is the monitoring and processing of
  personal data by AI agents to be regulated?
• (c) Can bionic implants be used to enhance,
  rather than restore, physical and intellectual
  capabilities?

47
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• An answer might be that all three questions
  address possibilities that have an immediate
  impact on single human beings, since
• responsibility is traditionally attributed to
  single actors (which includes individuals),
• the human right to privacy protects the ability
  to live autonomously, and
• enhancements are for the benefit of a singular
  person.

48
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• The importance of robot-human-integration goes
  beyond the level of the single individual and
  address the question about how society or
  community could and should look like in which
  bots are integrated. Probably only certain
  members of a society or community will interact
  with certain kind of bots, for instance
  entertainment bots for rich people, service bots
  for elderly or ill people etc.

49
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• This kind of interaction with bots may also build
  new forms of communities. Close attention should
  be paid to what groups of individuals are likely
  to interact with certain kind of bots in a
  certain context while at the same time keeping
  the perspective on the impact of the specific
  interactions on the communities and societies in
  which this specific forms of interactions take
  place.

50
B. Techno-ethical issues 3. Ethical aspects

• All three forms of human-bot integration may
  include aspects of violation as well as fostering
  of human rights and dignity. It may not even
  ruled out that one and the same technology may do
  have both positive and negative effects.
  Surveillance infrastructures may be considered
  harmful with regard to privacy, but they may also
  enable us to create new kinds of communities.

51
Conclusion

• The potential benefits or harm may be caused by
  certain forms of human-bot-integration.
• How to dissolve arising conflicts, especially if
  there is a conflict between the individual
  perspective and the perspective of a society or
  community?

52
Conclusion

• Such kind of enhancements might be considered a
  benefit to an individual but also raise new
  questions such as
• whether only an elite might be able to transform
  themselves into cyborgs
• or another worse case scenario whether the
  unemployed would be forced to be have some sorts
  of implants to enable them to do certain jobs.

53
Conclusion

• At the time given, there is no need to address
  the issue of whether bots should be seen as
  persons. Present ethical questions raise the
  point of human responsibility as a fundamental
  issue to be addressed in an ethical enquiry on
  techno-ethics.

54
Conclusion

• This includes questions such as
• Who and how should according to which principles
  adscript responsibility to whom in cases that
  involve human-bot integration? and what should be
  the consequences of such an adscription?
• Who is responsible for designing and maintaining
  an infrastructure in which information about
  persons is collected and processed?

55
Conclusion

• How does the possibility of invasive human-bot
  integration have influence on the concept of
  responsibility? This includes
• Does the fact that a human being is enhanced lead
  to a special kind of responsibility?
• What are the consequences for whose who are
  responsible for providing the technology used for
  enhancement?

56
Conclusion

• When addressing the question of responsibility we
  should take into account that there are different
  levels of responsibility even when ascribing
  responsibility to an individual which might be
  held responsible
• for something with regard to her/his personal
  well-being, to the social environment (friends,
  family, community),
• to his/her specific (professional or private)
  role also as a citizen who is responsible to the
  society or the state someone lives in, or as a
  human being at all.

57
Conclusion

• Furthermore this does include the question
  whether and how responsibility might be delegated
  and whether institutions might be moral
  responsible with regard to robots.

58
Conclusion

• Robots are less our slaves which is a
  projection of the mimetic desire of societies in
  which slavery was permitted and/or promoted
  than a tool for human interaction.
• This throws questions of privacy and trust
  (Arnall 2003, 59) but also of the way we define
  ourselves as workers in industry, service and
  entertainment.

59
Conclusion

• This concerns different kinds of cultural
  approaches to robots in Europe and in other
  cultures that may have different impact in a
  global world. Different cultures have different
  views on autonomy and human dignity.

60
Acknowledgements

• Thanks to Guglielmo Tamburrini (University of
  Naples), Michael Nagenborg (University of
  Karlsruhe), Jutta Weber (University of
  Duisburg-Essen) and Christoph Pingel, (Karlsruhe
  Center for Art and Media) for ongoing discussions
  on the relationship between ethics and robotics
  within the framework of the ETHICBOTS project.

61
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