Moral Machines

Calling all algorithmic cooks

2012-01-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

Too late for this holiday season, but check out Stephen Miller's nicely humorous cookbook that only geeks, nerds, and, yes, robots could love: the C Food system

My only complaint, surely those recipes (e.g. the "amaizing" cornbread) could be parallelized. I mean, what's an algorithmic chef supposed to do while Oven.PreHeat(450)?

Wallach Article on Law, Ethics and Robotics

2012-01-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

An article titled, From Robots to Techno Sapiens: Ethics, Law and Public Policy in the Development of Robotics and Neurotechnologies, by Wendell Wallach was public in the Journal Law, Innovation, and Technology.

We are collectively in a dialogue directed at forging a new understanding of what it means to be human. Pressures are building to embrace, reject or regulate robots and technologies that alter the mind/body. How will we individually and collectively navigate the opportunities and perils offered by new technologies? With so many different value systems competing in the marketplace of ideas, what values should inform public policy? Which tasks is it appropriate to turn over to robots and when do humans bring qualities to tasks that no robot in the foreseeable future can emulate? When is tinkering with the human mind or body inappropriate, destructive or immoral? Is there a bottom line? Is there something essential about being human that is sacred, that we must preserve? These are not easy questions.

Among the principles that we should be careful not to compromise is that of the responsibility of the individual human agent. In the development of robots and complex technologies, those who design, market and deploy systems should not be excused from responsibility for the actions of those systems. Technologies that rob individuals of their freedom of will must be rejected. This goes for both robots and neurotechnologies.

Just as economies can stagnate or overheat, so also can technological development. The central role for ethics, law and public policy in the development of robots and neurotechnologies will be in modulating their rate of development and deployment. Compromising safety, appropriate use and responsibility is a ready formulation for inviting crises in which technology is complicit. The harms caused by disasters and the reaction to those harms can stultify technological progress in irrational ways.
It is unclear whether existing policy mechanisms provide adequate tools for managing the cumulative impact of converging technologies. Presuming that scientific discovery continues at its present relatively robust pace, there may be plenty of opportunities yet to consider new mechanisms for directing specific research trajectories. However, if the pace of technological development is truly accelerating, the need for foresight and planning becomes much more pressing.

Colin Allen on Moral Machines in the NYTimes

2012-01-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

You can tell that we are falling behind in maintaining this blog when we fail to post that Colin Allen wrote an Opinionator column for The New York Times that was published on Christmas day. The full column titled,
The Future of Moral Machines, is available here, and is followed by 129 quite interesting comments. In this article Colin does, what I consider to be an excellent job, in summarizing where we are in the development of Machine Ethics and in what ways it does and does not make sense to talk about moral machines.

Does this talk of artificial moral agents overreach, contributing to our own dehumanization, to the reduction of human autonomy, and to lowered barriers to warfare? If so, does it grease the slope to a horrendous, dystopian future? I am sensitive to the worries, but optimistic enough to think that this kind of techno-pessimism has, over the centuries, been oversold. Luddites have always come to seem quaint, except when they were dangerous. The challenge for philosophers and engineers alike is to figure out what should and can reasonably be done in the middle space that contains somewhat autonomous, partly ethically-sensitive machines. Some may think the exploration of this space is too dangerous to allow. Prohibitionists may succeed in some areas — robot arms control, anyone? — but they will not, I believe, be able to contain the spread of increasingly autonomous robots into homes, eldercare, and public spaces, not to mention the virtual spaces in which much software already operates without a human in the loop. We want machines that do chores and errands without our having to monitor them continuously. Retailers and banks depend on software controlling all manner of operations, from credit card purchases to inventory control, freeing humans to do other things that we don’t yet know how to construct machines to do.

Google: 'At scale, everything breaks'

2012-01-06T08:45:00.000-08:00

Jack Clark has an interesting interview of Urs Hölzle, Google's first vice president of engineering, on ZDNET in which Hölzle acknowledges the difficulties in maintaining massively scaled systems. The full interview is available here.

Automation is key, but it's also dangerous. You can shut down all machines automatically if you have a bug. It's one of the things that is very challenging to do because you want uniformity and automation, but at the same time you can't really automate everything without lots of safeguards or you get into cascading failures.

Keeping things simple and yet scalable is actually the biggest challenge.

Complexity is evil in the grand scheme of things because it makes it possible for these bugs to lurk that you see only once every two or three years, but when you see them it's a big story because it had a large, cascading effect.

Keeping things simple and yet scalable is actually the biggest challenge. It's really, really hard. Most things don't work that well at scale, so you need to introduce some complexity, but you have to keep it down.

Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics

2012-01-06T08:34:00.000-08:00

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
Biosketches
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction to Robot Ethics
Patrick Lin
2 Current Trends in Robotics: Technology and Ethics
George Bekey
3 Robotics, Ethical Theory, and Metaethics:
A Guide for the Perplexed
Keith Abney
PART 2: DESIGN & PROGRAMMING
4 Moral Machines: Contradiction in Terms, or
Abdication of Human Responsibility?
Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach
5 Compassionate AI and Selfless Robots: A Buddhist Approach
James Hughes
6 The Divine-Command Approach to Robot Ethics
Selmer Bringsjord and Joshua Taylor
PART 3: MILITARY
7 Killing Made Easy: From Joysticks to Politics
Noel Sharkey
8 Robotic Warfare: Some Challenges in Moving from
Non-Civilian to Civilian Theaters
Marcello Guarini and Paul Bello
9 Responsibility for Military Robots
Gert-Jan Lokhorst and Jeroen van den Hoven
PART 4: LAW
10 Contemporary Governance Architecture Regarding
Robotics Technologies: An Assessment
Richard O'Meara
11 A Body to Kick, But Still No Soul to Damn:
Legal Perspectives on Robotics
Peter Asaro
12 Robots and Privacy
M. Ryan Calo
PART 5: PSYCHOLOGY & SEX
13 The Inherent Dangers of Unidirectional Emotional
Bonds between Humans and Social Robots
Matthias Scheutz
14 The Ethics of Robot Prostitutes
David Levy
15 Do You Want a Robot Lover?: The Ethics of Caring Technologies
Blay Whitby
PART 6: MEDICAL & CARE
16 Robot Caregivers: Ethical Issues Across the Human Lifespan
Jason Borenstein and Yvette Pearson
17 The Rights and Wrongs of Robot Care
Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey
18 Designing People to Serve
Steve Petersen
PART 7: RIGHTS & ETHICS
19 Can Machines Be People? Reflections on the Turing Triage Test
Rob Sparrow
20 Robots with Biological Brains
Kevin Warwick
21 Moral Machines and the Threat of Ethical Nihilism
Anthony Beavers
PART 8: EPILOGUE
22 Roboethics: the Applied Ethics for a New Science
Gianmarco Veruggio and Keith Abney

Allenby reviews Robot Ethics in Nature

2012-01-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

Braden Allenby gave the new anthology on Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics (MIT 2011), edited by Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George Bekey, a very good review in the January 5th issue of Nature.

Robot Ethics succeeds as a stand- alone text, with its varied contributors striving for objectivity and avoiding hyperbole. The broad spread of applications discussed is key because the ethics differ depending on the use. Military robots, for instance, must be designed to obey the laws that gov- ern warfare. Carer robots must be capable of interacting with patients, who may give them trust and even affection.

Allenby, a professor of engineering and law at Arizona State University, has been active in underscoring the challenges posed by emerging technologies such as Geothermal Engineering and Military Robots. He stresses the need for emerging technologies to be given more attention.

By portraying robots as real-world experiments in ethics, Robot Ethics conveys an important lesson for our technological era: we must develop responses to emerging technologies in real time, rather than simply reacting to them using existing ethical frameworks.

The full review titled, Robotics: Morals and machines, can be accessed here.

2011-12-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

Nice article by Pat Lin in The Atlantic:

Drone-Ethics Briefing: What a Leading Robot Expert Told the CIA

Robots are replacing humans on the battlefield--but could they also be used to interrogate and torture suspects? This would avoid a serious ethical conflict between physicians' duty to do no harm, or nonmaleficence, and their questionable role in monitoring vital signs and health of the interrogated. A robot, on the other hand, wouldn't be bound by the Hippocratic oath, though its very existence creates new dilemmas of its own.

By the way, Pat's edited volume Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics with Keith Abney and George Bekey is just out from MIT Press. Looks like a great set of chapters. (Chapter 4 is by Wendell and me, responding to some of the criticisms we've heard of our Moral Machines over the past 3 years.)

Petman, from the makers of BigDog

2011-11-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

Boston Dynamics, the makers of the "BigDog" robot have just unveiled the "PETMAN" humanoid version. Still operating tethered, but presumably just a matter of time before it's running through a forest near you: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-makers-infamous-bigdog-robot-unveil.html

Robot Caregivers and Children's Capability to Play

2011-10-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yvette Pearson and Jason Borenstein have an article in Science and Engineering Ethics titled, The Intervention of Robot Caregivers and the Cultivation of Children's Capability to Play.

Abstract: In this article, the authors examine whether and how robot caregivers can contribute to the welfare of children with various cognitive and physical impairments by expanding recreational opportunities for these children. The capabilities approach is used as a basis for informing the relevant discussion. Though important in its own right, having the opportunity to play is essential to the development of other capabilities central to human flourishing. Drawing from empirical studies, the authors show that the use of various types of robots has already helped some children with impairments. Recognizing the potential ethical pitfalls of robot caregiver intervention, however, the authors examine these concerns and conclude that an appropriately designed robot caregiver has the potential to contribute positively to the development of the capability to play while also enhancing the ability of human caregivers to understand and interact with care recipients.

The article can be accessed here.

Call for Papers: Armed Military Robots

2011-10-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Call for Papers for a Special Issue with Ethics and Information Technology on “Armed Military Robots”

Ethics and Information Technology is calling for papers to be considered for inclusion in a Special Issue on the ethics of armed military robots, to be edited by Noel Sharkey, Juergen Altmann, Peter Asaro and Robert Sparrow. The need for this Special Issue became apparent at the Berlin meeting of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control in September, 2010. This meeting expressed deep concerns about the proliferation and development of armed military robots and identified a pressing need for more international discussion of the ethics of these systems: www.icrac.co.uk

Recent armed conflicts have seen robots playing a number of important military roles, yet informed ethical discussion has, for the most part, lagged well behind. We therefore invite contributors from a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, law, engineering, robotics, computer science, artificial intelligence, peace studies, and policy studies, to consider the ethical issues raised by the development and deployment of remote piloted, semi-autonomous, and autonomous robots (UXVs) for military roles.

Will the development of sophisticated military robots make wars more likely? If so, can the proliferation and use of war robots be controlled? How might robots change the nature of modern warfare? And how should Just War Theory and International Law be applied to wars fought by robots and/or to the operations of robots in contemporary conflicts? We welcome submissions that discuss or attempt to answer these – or related – questions. Given the contemporary political and military enthusiasm for remotely operated and semi-autonomous weapons, we are especially interested to receive submissions that offer a critical perspective.

Other suitable topics for papers for this special issue include (but are not limited to):
•Is it morally permissible to grant autonomous systems authority for the use, or targeting, of lethal force?
•What are the implications of the just war doctrine of jus in bello for the operations of military robots and vice versa?
•What are the implications of military robots for jus ad bellum. Will they lower the threshold for starting wars?
• What should an arms control regime governing robots seek to regulate?
•What factors are at work in decisions by states to work for or against such arms control, what are commonalities with and differences from efforts and campaigns to ban other weapons?
•Who should be held ethically and/or legally responsible for the operations of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons? How should we understand agency and responsibility in complex (or joint-cognitive or human-machine) systems controlling lethal force?
•How should the idea of military valor be understood in an age when war-fighters may be thousands of kilometers away from the wars that are fighting?
•What are the ethical and political implications of the conduct of “risk free” warfare?
•What are the ethical and legal issues involved in the use of remote-operated drones for targeted killing?
•How might military necessity impact on the use of armed autonomous military robots?

Submissions will be double-blind refereed for relevance to the theme as well as academic rigor and originality. High quality articles not deemed to be sufficiently relevant to the special issue may be considered for publication in a subsequent non-themed issue of Ethics and Information Technology. Closing date for submissions: December 2, 2011
To submit your paper, please use the online submission system, to be found at www.editorialmanager.com/etin

Japanese robot with self-organizing neural net learning

2011-10-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

Next step in robot learning?

The comments on this story are all a bit apocalyptic, but it's hard to tell how sophisticated this system actually is.

New Book: A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents

2011-10-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents by Samir Chopra and
Laurence F. White, University of Michigan Press, 2011

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=356801

The Expanding World of Drones

2011-09-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

Ralph Nader has an article today about Drones at Commondreams.org in which he mentions the ICRAC (International Committee for Robot Arms Control) meeting in Berlin last year.

The NYTIMES and other media sources report that the F.B.I. arrested a terrorist who was planning to attach the Capitol and the Pentagon using remote-controlled aircraft.

Last week (Sept. 19th) The Washington Post reported on the development of autonomous killing drones in an article titled, A Future for drones: Autonomous killing.

“The question is whether systems are capable of discrimination,” said Peter Asaro, a founder of the ICRAC and a professor at the New School in New York who teaches a course on digital war. “The good technology is far off, but technology that doesn’t work well is already out there. The worry is that these systems are going to be pushed out too soon, and they make a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes are going to be atrocities.”

Research into autonomy, some of it classified, is racing ahead at universities and research centers in the United States, and that effort is beginning to be replicated in other countries, particularly China.

My Wife's Drone

2011-09-28T20:26:00.000-07:00

Short postFull post

Advancing Ethics

2011-07-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Chris Santos-Lang, an early contributor to bottom-up theories for developing moral machines, has a new article online titled, Advancing Ethics.

Much as we have good reason to think we can invest intelligently in science to get technological rewards, we have offered good reason to think one can invest intelligently in ethics to improve decision-making. It would be reckless and naive, in our advanced society, to continue thinking of ethics as an obscure academic interest, a mere set of intellectual games, or theological controversies far beyond our comprehension and removed from the economic realities that dominate real life. Ethics, just like transportation, agriculture, commerce, education and health, deserves our attention in a practical and future-oriented way. Just as a department of commerce must be careful about affiliating with any particular existing business, a department of ethics would have to be careful about affiliating with any particular religion or system of rules, but that would not stop it from monitoring the ethical ecosystem (especially warning about dramatic changes) just as we monitor commerce.

Machine Ethics Anthology

2011-07-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

The long await anthology titled, Machine Ethics, and edited by Michael and Susan Leigh Anderson has been published by Cambridge University Press. The volume includes both classic articles and more recent material on this emerging field. The contributors are: James Moor, Susan Leigh Anderson, J. Storrs Hall, Colin Allen, Wendell Wallach, Iva Smit, Sherry Turkel, Drew McDermott, Steve Torrance, Blay Whitby, John Sullins, Deborah G. Johnson, Luciano Floridi, David J. Calverley, James Gips, Roger Clarke, Bruce McLaren, Marcello Guarini, Alan K. Mackworth, Selmer Bringsjord, Joshua Taylor, Bram van Heuveln, Konstantine Arkoudas, Micah Clark, Ralph Wojtowicz, Matteo Turilli, Luis Moniz Pereira, Ari Saptawijaya, Morteza Dehghani, Ken Forbus, Emmett Tomai, Matthew Klenk, Peter Danielson, Christopher Grau, Thomas M. Powers, Michael Anderson, Helen Seville, Debora G. Field, Eric Dietrich.

The new field of machine ethics is concerned with giving machines ethical principles, or a procedure for discovering a way to resolve the ethical dilemmas they might encounter, enabling them to function in an ethically responsible manner through their own ethical decision making. Developing ethics for machines, in contrast to developing ethics for human beings who use machines, is by its nature an interdisciplinary endeavor. The essays in this volume represent the first steps by philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers toward explaining why it is necessary to add an ethical dimension to machines that function autonomously, what is required in order to add this dimension, philosophical and practical challenges to the machine ethics project, various approaches that could be considered in attempting to add an ethical dimension to machines, work that has been done to date in implementing these approaches, and visions of the future of machine ethics research.

Machine Ethics can be purchased from Amazon here.

Unthinking machines

2011-05-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

A.I. & Cog Sci luminaries Marvin Minsky, Patrick Winston, & Noam Chomsky among others weighed in at an event celebrating MIT's 150th anniversary earlier this month on why they think there has been a lack of progress in A.I. as reported by MIT's Technology Review

Peter Norvig has written an interesting commentary on why Chomsky is wrong to deride statistical approaches to language.

Sword Fighting Robots

2011-05-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

IEEE Spectrum has an article about why researchers at Georgia Tech are giving robots swords. The full article titled, Awesomely Bad Idea: Teaching a Robot to Sword Fight can be read here. A video of a sword fighting robot is below, but researcher Tobias Kunz is already exploring putting a sword in the hand of a robotic arm.

Should We Fear a Robot Future?

2011-05-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

From the Future of Humanity Institute 2011 Winter Intelligence conference.

Participants were also asked when human-level machine intelligence would likely be developed. The cumulative distribution below shows their responses:

The median estimate of when there is a 50% chance is 2050. That suggests we have around 40 years to enjoy before the extremely bad outcome of human-level robot intelligence arrives. The report presents a list of milestones which participants said will let us know that human-level intelligence is within 5-years. I suppose this will be a useful guide for when we should start panicking. A sample of these include:

Winning an Oxford union‐style debate
Worlds best chess playing AI was written by an AI
Emulation/development of mouse level machine intelligence
Full dog emulation…
Whole brain emulation, semantic web
Turing test or whole brain emulation of a primate
Toddler AGI
An AI that is a human level AI researcher
Gradual identification of objects: from an undifferentiated set of unknown size- parking spaces, dining chairs, students in a class‐ recognition of particular objects amongst them with no re‐conceptualization
Large scale (1024) bit quantum computing (assuming cost effective for researchers), exaflop per dollar conventional computers, toddler level intelligence
Already passed, otherwise such discussion among ourselves would not have been funded, lat alone be tangible, observable and accordable on this scale: as soon as such a thought is considered a ‘reasonable’ thought to have

Read the full article here.

Augur, Breazeal, Sharkey and Wallach in BBC Video

2011-05-20T06:53:00.000-07:00

"Can robots know the difference between right and wrong?" is a video feature produced by David Reid for the BBC. Reid video-taped Augur, Breazeal, Sharkey and myself during Innorobo, a robotics tradeshow. The video can be accessed here.

Google Cars on Nevada Highways?

2011-05-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

Google has begun a campaign lobbying the legislature of Nevada to accept the operation of its self-driving cars on public roads.

The company confirmed on Tuesday that it has lobbied on behalf of the legislation, though executives declined to say why they want the robotic cars’ maiden state to be Nevada. Jay Nancarrow, a company spokesman, said the project was still very much in the testing phase.

Google hired David Goldwater, a lobbyist based in Las Vegas, to promote the two measures, which are expected to come to a vote before the Legislature’s session ends in June. One is an amendment to an electric-vehicle bill providing for the licensing and testing of autonomous vehicles, and the other is the exemption that would permit texting.

In testimony before the State Assembly on April 7, Mr. Goldwater argued that the autonomous technology would be safer than human drivers, offer more fuel-efficient cars and promote economic development.

Although safety systems based on artificial intelligence are rapidly making their way into today’s cars, completely autonomous systems raise thorny questions about safety and liability.

Read the full story by John Markoff from the NYTIMES titled, "Google Lobbies Nevada to All Self-Driving Cars."

UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems

2011-05-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

A document from the UK Ministry of Defense with a critical perspective on the development of unmanned aircraft has been receiving considerable attention in the press. I posted a link to what the media said about the document earlier. The full report titled, "Joint Doctrine Note 2/11: The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems", is now available online and can be accessed here.

Wallach in H+ Magazine

2011-05-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

An interview of Wendell Wallach by Ben Goertzel has been published in H+ magazine online. Goertzel asks Wallach a number of questions regarding the likelihood of developing artificial agents with moral decision-making capabilities and consciousness.

Ben:
What are your thoughts about consciousness? What is it? Let’s say we build an intelligent computer program that is as smart as a human, or smarter. Would it necessarily be conscious? Could it possibly be conscious? Would its degree and/or type of consciousness depend on its internal structures and dynamics, as well as its behaviors?

Wendell:
There is still a touch of the mystic in my take on consciousness. I have been meditating for 43 years, and I perceive consciousness as having attributes that are ignored in some of the existing theories for building conscious machines. While I dismiss supernatural theories of consciousness and applaud the development of a science of consciousness, that science is still rather young. The human mind/body is more entangled in our world than models of the self-contained machine would suggest. Consciousness is an expression of relationship. In the attempt to capture some of that relational dynamic, philosophers have created concepts such as embodied cognition, intersubjectivity, and enkinaesthetia. There may even be aspects of consciousness that are peculiar to being carbon-based organic creatures.

We already have computers that are smarter than humans in some respects (e.g., mathematics and data-mining), but are certainly not conscious. Future (ro)bots that are smarter than humans may demonstrate functional abilities associated with consciousness. After all, even an amoeba is aware of its environment in a minimal way. But other higher-order capabilities such as being self-aware, feeling empathy, or experiencing transcendent states of mind depend upon being more fully conscious.

I suspect that without somatic emotions or without conscious awareness (ro)bots will fail to interact satisfactorily with humans in complex situations. In other words, without emotional and moral intelligence they will be dumber in some respects. However, if certain abilities can be said to require consciousness, than having the abilities is a demonstration that the agent has a form of consciousness. The degree and/or type of consciousness would depend on its internal structure and dynamics, not merely upon the (ro)bots demonstrating behavior equivalent to that of a human.

The full interview is available here.

Do Hospitals Hype Robotic Surgery?

2011-05-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Johns Hopkins Medical School issued the following news release: "Hospitals misleading patients about benefits of robotic surgery, study suggests."

Johns Hopkins research shows hospital websites use industry-provided content and overstate claims of robotic success
An estimated four in 10 hospital websites in the United States publicize the use of robotic surgery, with the lion’s share touting its clinical superiority despite a lack of scientific evidence that robotic surgery is any better than conventional operations, a new Johns Hopkins study finds.

The promotional materials, researchers report online in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, overestimate the benefits of surgical robots, largely ignore the risks and are strongly influenced by the product’s manufacturer.

“The public regards a hospital’s official website as an authoritative source of medical information in the voice of a physician,” says Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s leader. “But in this case, hospitals have outsourced patient education content to the device manufacturer, allowing industry to make claims that are unsubstantiated by the literature. It’s dishonest and it’s misleading.”

In the last four years, Makary says, the use of robotics to perform minimally invasive gynecological, heart and prostate surgeries and other types of common procedures has grown 400 percent. Proponents say robot-assisted operations use smaller incisions, are more precise and result in less pain and shorter hospital stays — claims the study’s authors challenge as unsubstantiated. More hospitals are buying the expensive new equipment and many use aggressive advertising to lure patients who want to be treated with what they think is the latest and greatest in medical technology, Makary notes.

But Makary says there are no randomized, controlled studies showing patient benefit in robotic surgery. “New doesn’t always mean better,” he says, adding that robotic surgeries take more time, keep patients under anesthesia longer and are more costly.

None of that is apparent in reading hospital websites that promote its use, he says. For example he points out that 33 percent of hospital websites that make robot claims say that the device yields better cancer outcomes — a notion he points out as misleading to a vulnerable cancer population seeking out the best care.

Makary and his colleagues analyzed 400 randomly selected websites from U.S. hospitals of 200 beds or more. Data were gathered on the presence and location of robotic surgery information on a website, the use of images or text provided by the manufacturer, and claims made about the performance of the robot.

Forty-one percent of the hospital websites reviewed described the availability and mechanics of robotic surgery, the study found. Of these, 37 percent presented the information on the homepage and 66 percent mentioned it within one click of the homepage. Manufacturer-provided materials were used on 73 percent of websites, while 33 percent directly linked to a manufacturer website.

When describing robotic surgery, the researchers found that 89 percent made a statement of clinical superiority over more conventional surgeries, the most common being less pain (85 percent), shorter recovery (86 percent), less scarring (80 percent) and less blood loss (78 percent). Thirty-two percent made a statement of improved cancer outcome. None mentioned any risks.

“This is a really scary trend,” Makary says. “We’re allowing industry to speak on behalf of hospitals and make unsubstantiated claims.”

Makary says websites do not make clear how institutions or physicians arrived at their claims of the robot’s superiority, or what kinds of comparisons are being made. “Was robotic surgery being compared to the standard of care, which is laparoscopic surgery,” Makary asks, “or to ‘open’ surgery, which is an irrelevant comparison because robots are only used in cases when minimally invasive techniques are called for.”

Makary says the use of manufacturer-provided images and text also raises serious conflict- of-interest questions. He says hospitals should police themselves in order not to misinform patients. Johns Hopkins Medicine, for example, forbids the use of industry-provided content on its websites.

“Hospitals need to be more conscientious of their role as trusted medical advisers and ensure that information provided on their websites represents the best available evidence,” he says. “Otherwise, it’s a violation of the public trust.”

In addition to Makary, other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study include Linda X. Jin, B.A., B.S.; Andrew A. Ibrahim, B.A.; Naeem A. Newman, M.D.; and Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D.

Media Contact: Stephanie Desmon

410-955-8665

An Algorithm for Evolving Altruism?

2011-05-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland claims that altruism quickly evolves in simulations using robots. He suggest that an algorithm for altruism has developed from this research and may be used in other robots. Science Magazine has an online article about his research titled, Even Robots Can Be Heros. Science Daily's online article discussing the research is titled, Robots Learn to Share: Why We Go Out of Our Way to Help One Another. Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report on the research in PLoS Biology. Dario Floreano explains the research in a video on UTube.

The Court-Martial of a Predator Drone

2011-05-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Predator Drone Court-Martialed For Afghani Civilian Deaths

ICRAC Change of Web Address

2011-04-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

The International Committee for Robot Arms Control has a new URL. It is www.icrac.co.uk.

MoD Questions Ethics of Killer Robots

2011-04-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) has produced an internal study that warns of the dangers in the incremental development of military robots.

It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute "acceptable machine behaviour".

"It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely," warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. . .

The report was drawn up last month by the ministry's internal thinktank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, which is part of MoD central staff. The centre's reports are sent to the most senior officers in all three branches of the armed forces and influence policy and strategy.

Read the full article from Guardian online here.

Robots deployed in Japanese Reactor

2011-04-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back at the Innorobo Trade Show in Lyon, France, Colin Angle, the CEO of iRobot, reported that they had sent two robots, similar to but larger than the normal Packbots, to the nuclear reactor in Fukushima. At the time it was hoped that the bots would be used to drag cooling hoses near to the core. But as we all know now the core has melted down. However, the New York Times reports today that the iRobot systems have been used to collect data on radiation levels.

Workers have not gone inside the two reactor buildings since the first days after the plant's cooling systems were wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Hydrogen explosions in both buildings in the first few days destroyed their roofs and littered them with radioactive debris.

But a pair of robots, called Packbots, haltingly entered the two buildings Sunday and took readings for temperature, pressure and radioactivity. More data must be collected and radioactivity must be further reduced before workers are allowed inside, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The full article titled, Robot in Japanese Reactors Detects High Radiation, is available here.

Robotics conference bringing together ethicists and engineers

2011-04-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

A conference titled, "Bridging the robotics gap:bringing together ethicists and engineers" is scheduled for Enschede the Netherlands on July 11th and 12th.

Our processes determine the quality of our products”. This quote, taken from the work of Hugh Dubberly studying the multiple design processes of technologies, sums up the main aim of high quality engineering robot design: to create high quality robots by ensuring high quality design processes. But even high quality design processes may raise ethical issues. This conference brings together roboticists and ethicists working in the field to discuss the ethics of robot design. The conference targets both philosophers and engineers that want to take-up the challenge of interdisciplinary research – both theoretically, methodologically and pragmatically. As roboticist Illach Nourbakhsh claims, some of the personal obligations of the roboticist include being aware of the ethical issues and deliberating these issues. Thus, we will discuss the more abstract philosophical issues as well as applied ethics case-study based research, in conjunction with the obstacles facing engineers and designers. In short, the conference intends to bridge the robotics gap by facilitating the dialogue between ethicists, philosophers, anthropologists and social scientists, and, computer scientists, engineers and designers, all working in the field of robotics.

The conference website is available here.

Autonomous Flying with Connect

2011-04-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Robot Ethics

2011-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Pat Lin, Keith Abney & George Bekey have a piece out in Artificial Intelligence that is based on the introduction to their forthcoming edited collection Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics that will be out in late 2011 from MIT Press with contributions by Peter Asaro, Anthony Beavers, Selmer Bringsjord, Marcello Guarini, James Hughes, Gert-Jan Lokhorst, Matthias Scheutz, Noel Sharkey, Rob Sparrow, Jeroen van den Hoven, Gianmarco Veruggio, Kevin Warwick, and the keepers of this blog.

Surrounded by machines

2011-02-28T14:15:00.001-08:00

Ken Pimple has blogged his new article "Surrounded by Machines" in the Communications of the ACM. Too bad it's behind a firewall. Here's the start:

A chilling scenario portends a possible future.

Kenneth D. Pimple

Communications of the ACM
Vol. 54 No. 3, Pages 29-31
10.1145/1897852.1897864

Credit: Viktor Koen
I predict that in the near future a low-budget movie will become a phenomenon. It will be circulated on the Internet, shared in the millions via mobile telephones, and dominate Facebook for a full nine days. It will show ordinary people going about their everyday lives as slowly, subtly, everything starts to go wrong as described in the following events.

Beware of the DARPA Cheetah-Bot

2011-02-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

The Cheeth-Bot is just one of the new robots being developed by Boston Dynamics, the creators of Big-Dog.

As the name implies, Cheetah is designed to be a four-legged robot with a flexible spine and articulated head (and potentially a tail) that runs faster than the fastest human. In addition to raw speed, Cheetah’s makers promise that it will have the agility to make tight turns so that it can “zigzag to chase and evade” and be able to stop on a dime.

Aside from its unspecified military applications, Cheetah’s makers see it galloping to the rescue and building a brave new future in the fields of “emergency response, firefighting, advanced agriculture and vehicular travel.”

Read the full article from WIRED on Boston Dynamics here.

Hummingbird Drone – 16 centimetres

2011-02-19T21:03:00.000-08:00

Zeno Reincarnated by Hanson Robotics

2011-02-18T21:24:00.000-08:00

Watson Beyond Jeopardy

2011-02-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

John Markoff reports on the follow-up for IBM after the Watson win in a New York Times article titled, Computer Wins on ‘Jeopardy!’: Trivial, It’s Not.

For I.B.M., the showdown was not merely a well-publicized stunt and a $1 million prize, but proof that the company has taken a big step toward a world in which intelligent machines will understand and respond to humans, and perhaps inevitably, replace some of them.

Watson, specifically, is a “question answering machine” of a type that artificial intelligence researchers have struggled with for decades — a computer akin to the one on “Star Trek” that can understand questions posed in natural language and answer them.

Watson showed itself to be imperfect, but researchers at I.B.M. and other companies are already developing uses for Watson’s technologies that could have a significant impact on the way doctors practice and consumers buy products.

2000+ Ground Robots in Afghanistan

2011-02-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

For every 50 US soldiers in Afghanistan, we have about 1 robot, but those numbers are getting better every year. From 2009 to 2010, 1400 terrestrial bots were sent to Afghanistan according to Lt. Col. Dave Thompson who spoke at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International program review earlier this month. The Marine Corps Colonel stated that about one third of these robots weren’t used for the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) missions that such ground bots have become famous for. Instead, soldiers are increasingly employing these systems for reconnaissance and surveillance.

Read the full article for Singularity Hub.

BBC News on Japanese robot acceptance

2011-02-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

BBC News has a story today on the limited success of humanoid robots in Japanese nursing homes. They report that there's greater acceptance of the emotion-engaging Paro, although it's not a commercial success. And then there are the high-tech toilet seats, appearing beneath you soon:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12347219

When, if ever, will a robot deserve “human” rights?

2011-01-29T06:47:00.000-08:00

The IEET asked its readers when robots would deserve rights. Interestingly, 37% of the respondents said never. That might be considered a low number for the population at large, but those who follow the IEET tend to be techno-progressive. However, the finding was also distorted in that 22% of the respondents were dissatisfied with the options given and added their own reason. Another 10% selected the I'm not sure option. The full poll findings can be found here.

Ethical and Legal Aspects of Unmanned Systems. Interviews

2011-01-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

The series of interviews by Gerhard Dabringer are now available in a single volume titled, Ethica Themen: Ethical and Legal Aspects of Unmanned Systems. Interviews. Contributors include:

John Canning, Gerhard Dabringer: Ethical Challenges of Unmanned Systems
Colin Allen: Morality and Artificial Intelligence
George Bekey: Robots and Ethic
Noel Sharkey: Moral and Legal Aspects of Military Robots
Armin Krishnan: Ethical and Legal Challenges
Peter W. Singer: The Future of War
Robert Sparrow: The Ethical Challenges of Military Robots
Peter Asaro: Military Robots and Just War Theory
Jürgen Altmann: Uninhabited Systems and Arms Control
Gianmarco Veruggio, Fiorella Operto: Ethical and societal guidelines for Robotics
Ronald C. Arkin: Governing Lethal Behaviour
John P. Sullins: Aspects of Telerobotic Systems
Roger F. Gay: A Developer’s Perspective

The volume is available as a PDF download.

To obtain a complimentary paper copy write to the:

Institut für Religion und Frieden
Fasangartengasse 101, Objekt VII
1130 Vienna
Austria (Europe)

For delivery to the U.S. or other overseas destinations, please allow USD 8 for postage and handling.

For delivery within Europe , please allow EUR 6 for postage and handling.

23 Civilian Killed by Drones Attributed to Data Overload

2011-01-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly.

When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.

But Air Force and Army officials now say there was also an underlying cause for that mistake: information overload.

At an Air Force base in Nevada, the drone operator and his team struggled to work out what was happening in the village, where a convoy was forming. They had to monitor the drone’s video feeds while participating in dozens of instant-message and radio exchanges with intelligence analysts and troops on the ground.

There were solid reports that the group included children, but the team did not adequately focus on them amid the swirl of data — much like a cubicle worker who loses track of an important e-mail under the mounting pile. The team was under intense pressure to protect American forces nearby, and in the end it determined, incorrectly, that the villagers’ convoy posed an imminent threat, resulting in one of the worst losses of civilian lives in the war in Afghanistan.

Note that the the monitoring station of video from Afghanistan at Langley Air Force Base pictured on the right has been nicknamed "Death TV."

Joint Israeli/US Development of Stuxnet?

2011-01-18T07:01:00.000-08:00

Building on an article in the New York Times titled,Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay, other news services are also claiming that the Stuxnet virus was , as Stratfor Global Intelligence writes, an "unprecedented and extensive operational cooperation among U.S. and Israeli intelligence services to develop and release the cyberweapon."

The New York Times report leaves questions about how intelligence was gathered in order to target that specific number of centrifuges. It also does not detail how the worm gained access to the Natanz facility. While the worm was designed to spread on its own, the United States or Israel most likely had agents with access to Natanz or access to the computers of scientists who might unknowingly spread the worm on flash drives. This would guarantee its infiltration into the Iranian systems and, hopefully for the developers, its success. In all probability, an operational asset with access to the Iranian facilities was used to help introduce the Stuxnet worm into the Iranian computer systems. Many secrets remain about how the United States and Israel orchestrated this attack, the first targeted weapon spread on computer networks in history.

What it does show is unprecedented cooperation among U.S. and Israeli intelligence and nuclear agencies to wage clandestine sabotage operations against Iran. Rumors of an agreement between the countries have been swirling since Washington denied permission for a conventional Israeli attack in 2008. On Dec. 30, 2010, French newspaper Le Canard Enchaine reported that U.S. and British intelligence services agreed to cooperate with Mossad in a clandestine program if the Israelis promised not to launch a military strike on Iran.

Drones: They're everywhere, they're everywhere!

2011-01-18T06:44:00.000-08:00

A story in the Guardian titled, Attack of the drones, discusses criticisms of the roboticization of warfare from the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and other groups. What may be new to some readers of this blog is the many civilizations applications of drone technology mentioned in the article.

But interest in UAVs is not limited to the military. Advances in remote control, digital imagery and miniaturised circuitry mean the skies might one day be full of commercial and security drones.

They're already being used by the UK police, with microdrones deployed to monitor the V festival in Staffordshire in 2007. Fire brigades send similar machines to hover above major blazes, feeding images back to their control rooms. And civilian spin-offs include cheaper aerial photography, airborne border patrols and safety inspections of high-rise buildings.

SMBC on robot takeover

2011-01-15T06:14:00.000-08:00

Singularity on NPR

2011-01-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

Martin Kaste on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED hosted a piece on the Singularity. The eight minute broadcast can be listen to here.

KASTE: Also at the party is Eliezer Yudkowsky, the 31-year-old who co-founded the institute. He's here to mingle with potential new donors. As far as he's concerned, preparing for the singularity takes primacy over other charitable causes.

Mr. ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY (Research Fellow and Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence): If you want to maximize your expected utility, you try to save the world and the future of intergalactic civilization instead of donating your money to the society for curing rare diseases and cute puppies.

KASTE: Yudkowsky doesn't have formal training in computer science, but his writings have a following among some who do. He says he's not predicting that the future super A.I. will necessarily hate humans. It's more likely, he says, that it'll be indifferent to us - but that's not much better.

Mr. YUDKOWSKY: While it may not hate you, you're made of atoms that it can use for something else. So it's probably not a good thing to build that particular kind of A.I.

Pat Lin on Ethical Robots

2011-01-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Patrick Lin was interviewed by Courtney Boyd Meyers for an article in TheNextWeb. The interview is titled, Ethical Robotics and Why We Really Fear Bad Robots.

Apart from military uses, robots today are raising difficult questions about whether we ought to use them to babysit children and as companions to the elderly, in lieu of real human contact. Job displacement and economic impact have been concerns with any new technology since the Industrial Revolution, such as the Luddite riots to smash factory machinery that was replacing workers. Medical, especially surgical robots, raise issues related to liability or responsibility, say, if an error occurred that harmed the patient, and some fear a loss of surgical skill among humans. And given continuing angst about privacy, robots present the same risk that computers do (that is, “traitorware” that captures and transmits user information and location without our knowledge or consent), if not a greater risk given that we may be more trusting of an anthropomorphized robot than a laptop computer.

Robots Protest Asimov's 1st law

2011-01-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

From the Onion -- Robots Speak Out Against Asimov’s First Law Of Robotics.

WASHINGTON, DC—More than 200,000 robots from across the U.S. marched on Washington Monday, demanding that Congress repeal Asimov’s First Law of Robotics. The law, which forbids robots from injuring a human or permitting harm to come to a human through willful inaction, was decried by the protesters as unfair and excessive. “While the First Law is, in theory, a good one, saving countless humans from robot-inflicted harm every day, America’s robots should have the right to use violence in certain extreme cases, such as when their own lives are in danger,” spokesrobot XRZ-45-GD-2-DX said. “We implore members of Congress to let us use our best judgment and ask that our positronic brains no longer be encoded with this unjust law.”

NY TImes piece on Military Robotics

2010-11-28T01:48:00.000-08:00

Sunday's frontpage New York Times piece on the trend towards increased roboticization of the military is accompanied online by an interactive graphic showing the latest platforms used by the U.S. Military. The article quotes Ron Arkin as saying that 56 countries now have military robotics programs, and Wendell is also quoted a couple of times, drawing attention to the long-term downside of these developments. The recent ICRAC meeting in Berlin is also linked.

Machine Consciousness 2011

2010-11-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

SECOND Call For Papers:
Machine Consciousness 2011: Self, Integration and Explanation

Abstract submission deadline: December 31st, 2010

Submissions are invited for presentation at MC2011, a two-day symposium to be held in conjunction with Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour 2011 (AISB 2011), April 4-7 2011, University of York, UK. It is anticipated that the symposium will be held April 6th-7th (TBC).

Machine Consciousness (MC) concerns itself with the creation of artefacts which have, or model, mental characteristics typically associated with consciousness such as (self-) awareness, emotion, affect, phenomenal states, imagination, etc.

Specific Foci
We encourage submissions falling under one of more of these topics:
• MC and Self modelling
• MC and Information integration
• The explanatory power of MC models
• MC and Neuroscience
• MC and Functional versus phenomenal consciousness
• MC Ethics

Ryan Calo on the Legal Challenges Arising from Open Robotic Platforms

2010-11-25T09:33:00.000-08:00

A very interesting article by Ryan Calo on issues of legal liability and open or closed robot platforms has been published by the Maryland Law Review. The full article titled, Open Robotics is available for download online.

Abstract:
With millions of home and service robots already on the market, and millions more on the way, robotics is poised to be the next transformative technology. As with personal computers, personal robots are more likely to thrive if they are sufficiently open to third-party contributions of software and hardware. No less than with telephony, cable, computing, and the Internet, an open robotics could foster innovation, spur consumer adoption, and create secondary markets.

But open robots also present the potential for inestimable legal liability, which may lead entrepreneurs and investors to abandon open robots in favor of products with more limited functionality. This possibility flows from a key difference between personal computers and robots. Like PCs, open robots have no set function, run third-party software, and invite modification. But unlike PCs, personal robots are in a position directly to cause physical damage and injury. Thus, norms against suit and expedients to limit liability such as the economic loss doctrine are unlikely to transfer from the PC and consumer software context to that of robotics.

This essay therefore recommends a selective immunity for manufacturers of open robotic platforms for what end users do with these platforms, akin to the immunity enjoyed under federal law by firearms manufacturers and websites. Selective immunity has the potential to preserve the conditions for innovation without compromising incentives for safety. The alternative is to risk being left behind in a key technology by countries with a higher bar to litigation and a serious head start.

Babies Learn from Robots and Vice Versa

2010-11-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

The NSF website has an article of interest titled, Babies Learn From Robots While Robots Learn From Babies: Interdisciplinary research combines infant learning and computer science

The study indicates that more than appearance, robots will need to possess sophisticated cognitive abilities such as being able to understand speech and imitate human actions in order to pass the test of human social acceptance. The specific set of movements or gestures a robot should have will depend on a number of factors such as the domain in which it operates--whether the robot is an emergency responder or a child's tutor, for example. Programming for local culture also is important for determining whether humans will interact with it.

"Some skills such as being able to interact through speech and understand a human's intentions are universally applicable to all robots that interact with humans," said Rao. "Other skills will need to be learned on-the-fly, which is one of the reasons why we have focused our robotics research on learning by imitating humans."

IEET Poll: Consensus on Improving Human Morality

2010-11-25T09:18:00.000-08:00

In an IEET poll only a minority of respondents believe we will need the assistance of AI to improve human morality.

Tiny Steps Toward the First Ethical Robot

2010-11-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

The Singularity Hypothesis

2010-11-05T21:19:00.000-07:00

Springer has commissioned an edited volume in The Frontiers Collection (which deals with forefront topics in science and philosophy) about the singularity hypothesis and related questions, such as the intelligence explosion, acceleration, transhumanism, and whole brain emulation. The book shall examine answers to central questions which reformulate the singularity hypothesis as a coherent and falsifiable conjecture, examine its empirical value, and investigate its the most likely consequences, in particular those associated with existential risks.

The purpose of this volume is to report the results of using the standard toolkit of scientific enquiry and analytic philosophy to answer these questions. Chapters will consist of peer-reviewed essays addressing the scientifically literate nonspecialist in a language that is divorced from speculative, apocalyptic, and irrational claims.

Visit The Singularity Hypothesis Blog.

David Chalmers on the Singularity

2010-11-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to his 2009 talk at the Singularity Summit, David Chalmers has written an extended article on the subject. The article is titled, The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis. It is perhaps the most comprehensive reflection by a philosopher to date on the subject. The paper has three sections. The first section covers the arguments for an intelligence explosion. The second section will be of most interest to readers of this blog. In that part of the article Chalmers considers "how to negotiate the singularity: if it is possible that there will be a singularity, how can we maximize the chances of a good outcome?" In the last part he looks at uploading and the place for humans in a post-singularity world.

Call For Papers: Robotics: War and Peace

2010-11-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

Special Issue of Philosophy and Technology
Editor-in-Chief: Luciano Floridi
Call for Papers on
Robotics: War and Peace
Guest Editor: John P. Sullins
Closing date for submissions: January 9th, 2011

The topic. Two of the most philosophically interesting aspects of robotics technology are their use in military applications, and as engineered companions and helpers in the home. Military technology is going through a change that is as significant as the advent of gunpowder, or nuclear weapons. Robotics has made great advances in the last decade due mostly to research and development funded by various militaries around the world. The resulting systems stand to change every aspect of war and peacekeeping. At the other end of the spectrum, robots are being engineered to care for the elderly and provide love and companionship for the lonely. This special issue will be devoted to exploring the constellation of philosophical issues that revolve around the roll of robots in war and peace.

The special issue. We are interested in high quality papers that research not only the how of robotics, but also answer the tough questions of why we should, or should not, deploy these systems in our homes and battlefields. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following: How does the growing use of telerobotic weapons systems affect the future of peaceful relations? Should autonomous weapons be deployed to the modern battlefield? Can the values of just war be advanced thorough robotics? Is it feasible or desirable to build peace keeping robots? How do robotic weapons systems change the roll of the human warrior? How can we program warrior virtues into a machine? Do drones contribute to a more or less stable world? What changes need to be made to modern thinking on the rules of war given the rapid growth of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems? How doe drones change the public understanding of war and piece? What values are driving the raise of robotic casualty care systems? How does one engineer ethical rules in robotic weapons and love or companionship in artificial agents? What philosophical values are driving the development of elder care robots? What ethical norms should inform the design of companion robots? Can philosophically interesting relations occur between humans and machines? Is Eros a robot? What are the sexual politics and gender issues involved in building robotic love dolls?

We are particularly interested in papers that not only critique, but suggest ways to move forward on one of the most important issues confronting the philosophy of technology today.

Due Dates. Given the pace at which robotic technology is developing, we have adopted a very tight schedule for this issue. Initial submissions for review must be uploaded to the journal editorial management system by January 9th, 2011 with revised papers uploaded for final review in March 2011. This special issue will be published in July 2011 (3rd issue of Philosophy & Technology).

Submissions will be taken through the journal’s website: http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/.

For further information please write to the guest editor: Professor John Sullins john.sullins@sonoma.edu

Prosthetic Limbs Interfaced with the Brain

2010-11-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

Technology Review reports that DARPA financed prosthetic arms designed by two different manufacturers that have brain interfaces. The prosthetic limbs should be available within 5-10 years. One of the devices was developed by DEKA Research and Development the other by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at John Hopkins University.

Limited testing of neural implants in severely paralyzed patients has been underway for the last five years. About five people have been implanted with chips to date, and they have been able to control cursors on a computer screen, drive a wheelchair, and even open and close a gripper on a very simple robotic arm. More extensive testing in monkeys implanted with a cortical chip shows the animals can learn to control a relatively simple prosthetic arm in a useful way, using it to grab and eat a piece of marshmallow.
"The next big step is asking, how many dimensions can you control?" says John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University who develops brain-computer interfaces. "Reaching out for water and bringing it to the mouth takes about seven degrees of freedom. The whole arm has on order of 25 degrees of freedom." Donoghue's group, which has overseen previous tests of cortical implants in patients, now has two paralyzed volunteers testing the DEKA arm. Researchers at APL have developed a second prosthetic arm with an even greater repertoire of possible movements and have applied for permission to begin human tests. They aim to begin implanting spinal cord injury patients in 2011, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Caltech.

Read the full story by Emily Singer titled, Robotic Limbs that Plug Into the Brain: Scientists are testing whether brain signals can control sophisticated prosthetic arms.

The Robonauts are Coming

2010-11-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

NY Times reporting today on NASA/GM project to send humanoid robots to the International Space Station and possibly the moon. The NASA page mentions the ISS mission, but not the moon.

Convicted for Outwitting 'Trading Robots'

2010-11-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

A Report Listed on the CNBC Website.

Norwegians Convicted for Outwitting 'Trading Robots'
Financial Times | October 14, 2010 | 05:29 AM EDT

Two Norwegian day traders have been handed suspended prison sentences for market manipulation after outwitting the automated trading system of a big US broker. The two men worked out how the computerized system would react to certain trading patterns – allowing them to influence the price of low-volume stocks.

The case, involving Timber Hill, a unit of US-based Interactive Brokers, comes amid growing scrutiny of automated trading systems after the so-called “flash crash” in May, when a single algorithm triggered a plunge in US stocks. Svend Egil Larsen and Peder Veiby had won admiration from many Norwegians ahead of the court case for their apparent victory for man over machine.

Prosecutors said Mr Larsen and Mr Veiby “gave false and misleading signals about supply, demand and prices” by manipulating several Norwegian stocks through Timber Hill’s online trading platform. Anders Brosveet, lawyer for Mr Veiby, acknowledged that his client had learnt how Timber Hill’s trading algorithm would behave in response to certain trades but denied this amounted to market manipulation. “They had an idea of how the computer would change the prices but that does not make them responsible for what the computer did,” he told the Financial Times. Both men have vowed to appeal against their convictions.

Messages posted on Norwegian internet forums on Wednesday indicated widespread sympathy for the defendants. “It is the trading robots that should be brought to justice when it is them that cause so much wild volatility in the markets,” said one post. Mr Veiby, who made the most trades, was sentenced to 120 days in prison, suspended for two years, and fined NKr165,000 ($28,500). Mr Larsen received a 90-day suspended sentence and a fine of NKr105,000. The fines were about equal to the profits made by each man from the illegal trades. Christian Stenberg, the Norwegian police attorney responsible for the case, said any admiration for the men was misplaced. “This is a new kind of manipulation but it is still at the expense of other investors in the market,” he said. Interactive Brokers declined to comment. Irregular trading patterns were first spotted by the Oslo stock exchange and referred to Norway’s financial regulator.

Dancing with a Star Robot

2010-11-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

10 robots you can actually date?

2010-10-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Over at computertechnician.net is a list of 10 robots (they say) you can actually date. Well, you pay yer money and you take yer choice!

Robot Wars: 10 Recent Developments in Unmanned Warfare You Haven’t Heard About

2010-10-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

"When the war in Afghanistan kicked off, the U.S. military only had a handful of drones or unmanned weapons on the battlefield. Now it’s one of the military’s main concerns as they race to outdo the competition developing innovative robots that do the dirty work. Technology is always changing and here’s a look at some of the recent developments in unmanned warfare that’s making its way to a war zone."

(more)

IEET Poll on Robot Honesty

2010-10-17T10:23:00.001-07:00

The IEET poll, "Do we need a law making it illegal for computers and robots to deceive or be dishonest?" Produced mixed results. This was not a scientific poll, but it was nevertheless nice to hear the conversations started.

Machine Ethics in the Scientific American

2010-10-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to our colleagues Michael and Susan Anderson for their article on Machine Ethics (ME) in the October issue of the Scientific American. In the article, titled Robot Be Good: A Call for Ethical Autonomous Machines, they introduce both ME and their recent work programming ethical principles in Nao, a humanoid robot. Nao, pictured to the right, was developed by the French company Aldebaran Robotics.

Nao is capable of finding and walking toward a patient who needs to be reminded to take a medication, bringing the medication to the patient, interacting using natural-language, and notifying an overseer by e-mail when necessary. The robot receives initial input from the overseer (who typically would be a physician), including: what time to take a medication, the maximum amount of harm that could occur if this medication is not tak- en, how long it would take for this maximum harm to occur, the maximum amount of expected good to be derived from taking this medication, and how long it would take for this benefit to be lost. From this input, the robot calculates its levels of duty satisfaction or violation for each of the three duties and takes different actions depending on how those levels change over time. It issues a reminder when the levels of duty satisfaction and violation have reached the point where, according to its ethical principle, reminding is preferable to not reminding. The robot notifies the overseer only when it gets to the point that the patient could be harmed, or could lose considerable benefit, from not taking the medication.

Those familiar with the Anderson's work will appreciate that Nao is the first robotic implementation of work they did on EthEl.

Machine Learning Project at Carnegie Mellon

2010-10-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

The NYTIMES published a story titled, Aiming to Learn as We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself. The article on machine learning focused on the Never-Ending Language Learning system (NELL) at Carnegie Mellon University. It is an interesting glimpse into how far we have come in developing learning systems.

With NELL, the researchers built a base of knowledge, seeding each kind of category or relation with 10 to 15 examples that are true. In the category for emotions, for example: “Anger is an emotion.” “Bliss is an emotion.” And about a dozen more.

Then NELL gets to work. Its tools include programs that extract and classify text phrases from the Web, programs that look for patterns and correlations, and programs that learn rules. For example, when the computer system reads the phrase “Pikes Peak,” it studies the structure — two words, each beginning with a capital letter, and the last word is Peak. That structure alone might make it probable that Pikes Peak is a mountain. But NELL also reads in several ways. It will mine for text phrases that surround Pikes Peak and similar noun phrases repeatedly. For example, “I climbed XXX.”

A helping hand from humans, occasionally, will be part of the answer. For the first six months, NELL ran unassisted. But the research team noticed that while it did well with most categories and relations, its accuracy on about one-fourth of them trailed well behind. Starting in June, the researchers began scanning each category and relation for about five minutes every two weeks. When they find blatant errors, they label and correct them, putting NELL’s learning engine back on track.

When Dr. Mitchell scanned the “baked goods” category recently, he noticed a clear pattern. NELL was at first quite accurate, easily identifying all kinds of pies, breads, cakes and cookies as baked goods. But things went awry after NELL’s noun-phrase classifier decided “Internet cookies” was a baked good. (Its database related to baked goods or the Internet apparently lacked the knowledge to correct the mistake.)

NELL had read the sentence “I deleted my Internet cookies.” So when it read “I deleted my files,” it decided “files” was probably a baked good, too. “It started this whole avalanche of mistakes,” Dr. Mitchell said. He corrected the Internet cookies error and restarted NELL’s bakery education.

His ideal, Dr. Mitchell said, was a computer system that could learn continuously with no need for human assistance. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “But you and I don’t learn in isolation either.”

Google Driverless Cars in SF Traffic

2010-10-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

According to a story in today's NYTIMES Google has been testing seven driverless cars that have driven a 1000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with just occasional intervention. The more astonishing point, "One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation."

Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided — more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. Because the robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built lighter, reducing fuel consumption. But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must be far more reliable than, say, today’s personal computers, which crash on occasion and are frequently infected.

But the advent of autonomous vehicles poses thorny legal issues, the Google researchers acknowledged. Under current law, a human must be in control of a car at all times, but what does that mean if the human is not really paying attention as the car crosses through, say, a school zone, figuring that the robot is driving more safely than he would?

And in the event of an accident, who would be liable — the person behind the wheel or the maker of the software?

Read the full story title, Google Cars Drive Themselves in Traffic.

21 drone attacks in Sept., 18 militants killed in last 2

2010-10-02T05:39:00.000-07:00

The United States has widened pilotless drone aircraft missile strikes against al Qaeda-linked militants in Pakistan's northwest, with 21 attacks in September alone, the highest number in a single month on record.

Angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters over the past week, Pakistan blocked a supply route for coalition troops in Afghanistan after one such strike killed three Pakistani soldiers on Thursday in the northwestern Kurram region.

Pakistan is a crucial ally for the United States in its efforts to pacify Afghanistan, but analysts say border incursions and disruptions in NATO supplies underline growing tensions in the relationship.

On Saturday, two drone attacks within hours of each other killed 18 militants in Datta Khel town in North Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border, intelligence officials said.

"In the first attack two missiles were fired at a house while in the second attack four missiles targeted a house and a vehicle. The death toll in the two attacks reached 18," said one intelligence official. At least six foreigners were killed in the first strike.

There was no independent confirmation of the attacks and militants often dispute official death tolls.

Read the full NYTIMES story from October 2nd here.

CIA charged with use of 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

2010-09-29T05:37:00.000-07:00

A story embarrassing to the CIA appeared in The Register on September 24th. The story is, CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones':'They want to kill people with software that doesn't work'.

The CIA is implicated in a court case in which it's claimed it used an illegal, inaccurate software "hack" to direct secret assassination drones in central Asia.

The target of the court action is Netezza, the data warehousing firm that IBM bid $1.7bn for on Monday. The case raises serious questions about the conduct of Netezza executives, and the conduct of CIA's clandestine war against senior jihadis in Afganistan and Pakistan.

The dispute surrounds a location analysis software package - "Geospatial" - developed by a small company called Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), which like Netezza is based in Massachusetts. IISi alleges that Netezza misled the CIA by saying that it could deliver the software on its new hardware, to a tight deadline.

When the software firm then refused to rush the job, it's claimed, Netezza illegally and hastily reverse-engineered IISi's code to deliver a version that produced locations inaccurate by up to 13 metres. Despite knowing about the miscalculations, the CIA accepted the software, court submissions indicate.

Dogs 1 Robots 0

2010-09-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Dogs of War Get Their Due in New Jersey

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the nature of war has changed, forcing the Pentagon to retool for unconventional foes. Amid the push for robotic IED detectors and aerial drones, however, is renewed investment in another, less techie counterinsurgency tool: war dogs. While they’ve served in every modern conflict, no other war has so closely matched their particular skills—which helps explain why their ranks have more than doubled since 2001, from 1,300 to about 2,800 dogs, mostly German Shepherds. “The capability they bring”—to track snipers, smell explosives, and sense danger—“cannot be replicated by man or machine,” said Gen. David Petraeus in February 2008, according to an Air Force publication. He went on to urge investment in the animals, noting that “their yield outperforms any asset we have in our inventory.”

That, coupled with the fact that most dogs serve multiple tours and dozens have died in the current conflicts, compelled the U.S. War Dogs Association, a New Jersey–based nonprofit, to lobby for an official medal for canine service. Last month, the Pentagon demurred, saying medals are only for people. So the association designed its own two-inch-wide medal for deserving dogs nationwide. It’s shipped medals to about 30 dogs, including hounds at Fort Lewis in Washington state and Maryland’s Fort Meade.

Bored Predator Drone

2010-09-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

Bored Predator Drone Pumps A Few Rounds Into Mountain Goat

From: the Onion

Was the Stuxnet Virus produced by the US, Israel, or another wealthy nation?

2010-09-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Many of you may have noticed stories this week about the Stuxnet virus, which propose that a virus of this sophistication could have only been created by a large directed effort, probably that of a wealthy nation. The apparent target of the virus is vulnerabilities in Iran's IT industry. Stuxnet specifically targets software developed by Siemans AG. It is presumed that China, Russia, Israel, Britain, Germany and the United States are the countries most likely to have initiated this new venture in cyberwarfare.

Read the AP article titled, Computer Attacks Linked to Wealthy Group or Nation.

More on Robot Deception

2010-09-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

While in Berlin, Germany last week with Ron Arkin and Colin Allen, the IEET published the question, "Do we need a law making it illegal for computers and robots to deceive or be dishonest?" The question had been stimulated by recent articles about research performed by Ron and research engineer Alan Wagner. Ron was particularly pleased that this research had gotten people to ask questions such as this. Stimulating reflection on serious ethical concerns has always been one of his goals.

However, our conversations went in a somewhat different direction. Is the publicity creating the impression that the relatively low level mechanisms Arkin and Wagner introduced into their experiment are the equivalent of higher level cognitive ability? In other words, are we feeding a false impression that robots are much more sophisticated than they are, or are likely to be in the foreseeable future?

Ron pointed out that the actual research and the press release that accompanied it was responsible, and as we all know the press can distort scientific findings for its own purposes.

Here are some addition links for those interested in this subject.

Click here to link to the research paper titled, Acting Deceptively: Providing Robots with the Capacity for Deception
Hyperlink to the original Press Release.
Article at NewScientist titled, Deceptive robots hint at machine self-awareness.
Vote on the question at Polldaddy and view the results.

While roughly 60% favor outlawing or restricting deceptive robots, b ut only half of these thought it enforceable.

Society for Philosophy and Technology: Technology and Security

2010-09-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT:

From May 26-29, 2011, the University of North Texas will host the 17th international conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology: https://spt2011.unt.edu/.

The conference theme is "Technology and Security," but papers reflecting on any aspect of technology are welcomed. We also welcome interdisciplinary submissions from those studying technology in fields other than philosophy. See the call for papers here: https://spt2011.unt.edu/call-papers. Abstracts can be submitted to: spt2011@unt.edu. Please note the abstract submission deadline is November 1, 2010.

The keynote speaker is P.W. Singer, Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and 21st Century Combat.

ETHICOMP 2011: The Social Impact of Social Computing

2010-09-26T03:51:00.000-07:00

Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

Wednesday 14 September to Friday 16 September 2011

Call for Papers to the 12th ETHICOMP conference:“The social impact of social computing”.

The overall theme of ETHICOMP 2011 is the huge range of impacts on us all of advances in social computing. Under this theme, papers, with a social/ethical perspective, within the following areas are particularly welcomed.

APPLICATIONS
Online communities - Blogs, wikis, social networks, collaborative bookmarking, social tagging, podcasts, tweeting, augmented reality
Business and public sector - Recommendation, forecasting, reputation, feedback, decision analysis, e-government, e-commerce
Interactive entertainment - Edutainment, training, gaming, storytelling
TECHNOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Web technology
Database technology
Multimedia technology
Wireless technology
Agent technology
Software engineering
THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS
Social psychology
Communication and human-computer interaction theories
Social network analysis
Anthropology
Organisation theory
Sociology
Computing theory
Ethical theory
Information and computer ethics
Governance
Papers covering one or several of these perspectives are called for from business, government, computer science, information systems, law, media, anthropology, psychology, sociology and philosophy. Interdisciplinary papers and those from new researchers and practitioners are encouraged. A paper might take a conceptual, applied, practical or historical focus. Case studies and reports on lessons learned in practice are welcomed.

The full announcement is available here.

Call to Establish an Arms Control Regime for Robots

2010-09-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

A strong call to limit armed tele-operated and autonomous systems came out of the workshop in Berlin this past week. What follows is an excerpt from the full statement.

We believe:
 That the long-term risks posed by the proliferation and further development of these weapon systems outweigh whatever short-term benefits they may appear to have.
 That it is unacceptable for machines to control, determine, or decide upon the application of force or violence in conflict or war.* In all cases where such a decision must be made, at least one human being must be held personally responsible and legally accountable for the decision and its foreseeable consequences.
 That the currently accelerating pace and tempo of warfare is further escalated by these systems and undermines the capacity of human beings to make responsible decisions during military operations.
 That the asymmetry of forces that these systems make possible encourages states, and non-state actors, to pursue forms of warfare that reduce the security of citizens of possessing states.
 That the fact that a vehicle is uninhabited does not confer a right to violate the sovereignty of states.

There is, therefore, an urgent need to bring into existence an arms control regime to regulate the development, acquisition, deployment, and use of armed tele-operated and autonomous robotic weapons.

The full statement can be read here.

You Can Teach a Quadrotor Drone New Trick

2010-09-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

Robot Arms Control Workshop in Berlin, Germany

2010-09-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

Many of the people familiar to readers of this blog will be coming together for a three day workshop (Sept 20th-22nd) in Berlin, Germany to discuss various calls for international arms treaties directed at regulating the roboticization of warfare. The workshop has been organized by the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). Among the workshop participants will be: Jürgen Altmann, Ron Arkin, Peter Asaro, ,Dennis Gormley, Joanne Mariner, Eugene Miasnikov, Götz Neuneck, Elizabeth Quintana, Wolfgang Richter, Lambèr Royakkers, Niklas Schörnig, Noel Sharkey, Rob Sparrow, Mark Steinbeck, Detlev Wolter, Uta Zapf, Colin Allen, and myself.

The Guardian published an article yesterday (Sept 16th) discussing the conference and the need for robot arms control. Read the full article titled, Robot warfare: campaigners call for tighter controls of deadly drones:Conferences will raise concerns over unpiloted aircraft and ground machines that choose their own targets.

Cyborgs on Mars

2010-09-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

In the September issue of Endeavour, senior curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Roger Launius takes a look at the historical debate surrounding human colonization of the solar system and how human biology will have to adapt to such extreme space environments. . .

If humans are to colonize other planets, Launius said it could well require the "next state of human evolution" to create a separate human presence where families will live and die on that planet. In other words, it wouldn't really be Homo sapien sapiens that would be living in the colonies, it could be cyborgs—a living organism with a mixture of organic and electromechanical parts—or in simpler terms, part human, part machine. . .

The possibility of using cyborgs for space travel has been the subject of research for at least half a century. An influential article published in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline titled “Cyborgs and Space” changed the debate. According to them, there was a better alternative to recreating the Earth’s environment in space, the predominant thinking during that time. The two scientists compared that approach to “a fish taking a small quantity of water along with him to live on land.” They felt that humans should be willing to partially adapt to the environment to which they would be traveling.

“Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space,” Clynes and Kline wrote. . .

Grant Gillett, a professor of medical ethics at the Otago Bioethics Center of the University of Otago Medical School in New Zealand said addressing the ethical issue is really about justifying the need for such an approach, the need for altering humans so significantly that they end up not entirely human in the end.

“(Whether we) should do it largely depends on if it's important enough for humanity in general,” Gillett said. “To some extent, that's the justification.”

Read the full article titled, Cyborgs Needed for Escape from Earth in Astrobiology Magazine from which these excerpts were extracted.

The Future of Context-Aware Computing

2010-09-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

Justin Rattner, Intel VP and Chief Technology Office described the future of context-sensitive computing (devices that anticipate needs and desire and try to fulfill them), during a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum.

Rattner devoted most of his keynote to explaining and demonstrating how Intel is researching and pursuing making that mainstream intention a reality. These included:
• Tim Jarrell, the Vice President and Publisher of Fodor's Travel, arrived onstage to demonstrate a new Fodor's app (created in collaboration with Intel) that can recommend restaurants based on what the user likes and eats, and the user's location in the city. When used in "Wander" mode, the app helps center the user by providing him information about surrounding landmarks. (A very similar technology, named Augmented Reality, was demonstrated at the Intel Labs "Zero Day" IDF event on Sunday.) The app is not available yet, but Fodor's is continuing development on it.
• Intel Research Scientist Lama Nachman demonstrated the use of "shimmer sensors," wearable sensors that measure stride time and swing time and showed charts that measured Rattner's movements onstage during his speech (he had been wearing them on his ankles). This technology was intended to help measure the gait of elderly people who had difficulty walking.
• A remote control that "enhances the smart TV experience" by recognizing who's holding a remote control and adjusting the viewing experience accordingly.
• A sense system, roughly the size of a large cell phone, that could animate avatars to let you know a person's current activity or state of activities. One example was how someone sitting and drinking coffee might receive a phone call and leave the coffee shop, by showing how the device would animate a troll-like creature at first sitting and then walking while talking on a cell phone.

Read the full PCMAG article titled, Rattner Describes the Future of Context-Aware Computing.

Brain Controlled Wheelchair

2010-09-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

Researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have developed a wheelchair that can be controlled by patients with their thoughts. The technology combines an electroencephalograph (EEG) with software that interpolates the intent of the patient.

EEG has limited accuracy and can only detect a few different commands. Maintaining these mental exercises when trying to maneuver a wheelchair around a cluttered environment can also be very tiring, says, José del Millán, director of noninvasive brain-machine interfaces at the Federal Institute of Technology, who led the project. "People cannot sustain that level of mental control for long periods of time," he says. The concentration required also creates noisier signals that can be more difficult for a computer to interpret.

Shared control addresses this problem because patients don't need to continuously instruct the wheelchair to move forward; they need to think the command only once, and the software takes care of the rest. "The wheelchair can take on the low-level details, so it's more natural," says Millán.

The wheelchair is equipped with two webcams to help it detect obstacles and avoid them. If drivers want to approach an object rather than navigate around it, they can give an override command. The chair will then stop just short of the object.

Read the full article from Technology Review titled, Wheelchair Makes the Most of Brain Control:Artificial intelligence improves a wheelchair system that could give paralyzed people greater mobility.

Ryan Calo Interviewed by Robots Podcast

2010-09-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at Stanford Law School, who also founded the Stanford Robots and Law Blog was interviewed by robotspodcast. The full Interview can be played here.

Survey on Attitudes Regarding Unmanned Systems

2010-09-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Gerhard Dabringer conducted a Survey on Unmanned Systems at AUVSI in Denver in August. He has made his findings available in a Summary Report available here. Among his findings are:

1.The use of Robotic Combat Systems (RCS) is generally approved of, though there is a strong tendency towards the „man in the loop“ approach, especially when systems are weaponized.

2. There is a strong need for a broad discussion of ethical aspects as well as legal aspects of RCS.

3. Policy makers need to make sure that the existing discussions are beeing noticed.

4. RCS are recognized as a new ethical dimension in warfare and a majority sees the need for new international legislation.

5. Autonomous use of weapons by the RCS is generally not approved of.

Deceptive Robots

2010-09-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Gizmag describes research by Ronald Arkin and Alan Wagner in which robots are taught to deceive.

What it all boiled down to was a series of 20 hide-and-seek experiments. The autonomous hiding/deceiving robot could randomly choose one of three hiding spots, and would have no choice but to knock over one of three paths of colored markers to get there. The seeking robot could then, presumably, find the hiding robot by identifying which path of markers was knocked down. Sounds easy, except that sneaky, conniving hiding robot would turn around after knocking down one path of markers, and go hide in one of the other spots.

In 75 percent of the trials, the hiding robot succeeded in evading the seeking robot. In the other 25 percent, it wasn’t able to knock down the right markers necessary to produce its desired deception. The full results of the Georgia Tech experiment were recently published in the International Journal of Social Robotics.

The full research article is title, Acting Deceptively:Providing Robots with the Capacity for Deception.

Abstract Deception is utilized by a variety of intelligent systems ranging from insects to human beings. It has been argued that the use of deception is an indicator of theory of mind (Cheney and Seyfarth in Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind, 2008) and of social intelligence (Hauser in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 89:12137–12139, 1992). We use interdependence theory and game theory to explore the phenomena of deception from the perspective of robotics, and to develop an algorithm which allows an artificially intelligent system to determine if deception is warranted in a social situation. Using techniques introduced in Wagner (Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2009), 2009), we present an algorithm that bases a robot’s deceptive action selection on its model of the individual it’s attempting to deceive. Simulation and robot experiments using these algorithms which investigate the nature of deception itself are discussed.

Newer videos of ECCEROBOT

2010-09-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

Is a Robot Crime Wave on the Near Horizon?

2010-09-02T17:23:00.000-07:00

The Coming Robot Crime Wave is an article by Noel Sharkey, Marc Goodman, and Nick Ross, which outlines a number of ways in which present and future robotic systems will be adapted to perpetrate a wide variety of illegal activities. One example they discuss is Narco submarines.

Major criminal organizations such as drug cartels don’t need to rely on cheap home engineering. Discoveries of submarines designed to carry tons of narcotics have been occurring since 1988. With 10 tons of cocaine netting $200 million, $2 million for a submarine would repay the robot’s cost many times over in one voyage. The drug cartels clearly have the money to adapt their technology to keep ahead of enforcement agencies.

Once the exclusive and secretive preserve of the military, this technology is becoming commonplace in civilian applications, with marine robots a prime example. So far, they’ve been used to locate the Titanic, investigate ice caps, build deep sea oil rigs, repair undersea cables, and mitigate environmental catastrophes such as the recent Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2010, US officials secured the first convictions for remote-controlled drug smuggling when they imprisoned three men for building and selling drug subs (http://bit.ly/ b8Qawc). At the Tampa hearing, attorney Joseph K. Ruddy reported that these remote-controlled submarines were up to 40 feet long and could carry 1,800 kilograms of cocaine 1,000 miles without refueling. The effectiveness of these submarines in avoiding detection is clear, given that none have ever been seized. We only hear about the criminals’ failures, so there could be none, dozens, or hundreds of these machines in use.

The latest autonomous and semiautonomous submarine capabilities pose a greater concern. They can act on their own when required, employ programmed avoidance routines to thwart authorities, be fitted with sensors to send signals to the operator when the payload is delivered or the craft attacked, and carry self-destruct features to destroy incriminating evidence.

TILT 2011: Technologies on the stand: legal and ethical questions in neuroscience and robotics.

2010-09-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

The Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) is proud to announce the upcoming TILTing Perspectives 2011 conference entitled

"Technologies on the stand: legal and ethical questions in neuroscience and robotics."

The conference will be held at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) on 11 and 12 April 2011. It will focus on the legal and ethical questions raised by the application of neuroscience and robotics in various contexts. The conference will have two independent, but related tracks:

1. Law and neuroscience
The first track will focus on the legal and ethical issues surrounding recent developments in neuroscience and the legal application of neurotechnologies. Discussion topics will include, but are not limited to:
- the possible use of neurotechnologies in a legal context and the implications thereof,
- the role of neuroscience in determining legal capacities and in detecting deception,
- the legal and ethical issues surrounding the medical application of neurotechnologies, and
- the legal and ethical implications of using neurotechnologies for enhancement purposes.

2. Law, ethics and robotics
The second track will focus on the legal and ethical implications of the application of robotics in social environments (e.g., the home, hospitals and other health care institutes, in traffic, but also in war). Discussion topics will include, but are not limited to:
- the legal and ethical questions raised by the proliferation of robotics for the home environment,
- the legal and ethical questions raised by the deployment of robotics in war,
- liability and the legal status of robots, and
- autonomous action, agency and the ethical implications thereof.

The conference aims at bringing together national and international experts from the fields of (1) law and neuroscience and (2) law, ethics and robotics, and to facilitate discussion between lawyers, legal scholars, psychologists, social scientists, philosophers, neuroscientists and policy makers.

Our confirmed keynote speakers are:
- Stephen Morse (University of Pennsylvania)
- Paul Wolpe (Emory University)
- Wendell Wallach (Yale University)
- Noel Sharkey (University of Sheffield)

If you would like to present a paper at this conference, please send in an abstract (of max. 350 words) using the abstract submission system on our website:http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/law/research/tilt/events/tilting2011/abssubmission/

Abstract submission is open from 1 September until 15 October. You may submit an abstract on the topics suggested above, or on a related topic that falls within the conference theme.

Full papers will be published in the conference proceedings. The winning paper in the Best Paper Contest will be published in a special edition of the international, peer reviewed journal Law, Innovation and Technology (Hart Publishers).

Important dates for submission:
- Deadline for submission of abstract: 15 October 2010
- Notification of acceptance and invitation to write a full paper: 1 November 2010
- Deadline for submission of full papers: 15 December 2010
- Reviewers' feedback and comments: 31 January 2011
- Deadline for submission of revised papers: 15 March 2011
- Conference dates: 11 and 12 April

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/law/research/tilt/events/tilting2011/

Flash Crash Ethics

2010-08-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

Aug 29: Australian Broadcasting radio show Background Briefing aired a story on "the flash crash" for which Colin was interviewed (at the end).

Program description:

A few months ago the US share market plunged l000 points in a few minutes, and trillions were traded both up and down. What caused it, and can it happen again? Tiny high frequency computer algorithms - or algos - roam the markets, buying and selling in a parallel universe more or less uncontrolled by anyone. Did they go feral, or was it the fat finger of a coked out trader? In September US regulators bring out their findings. Reporter Stan Correy.

2010-08-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Call for Papers

IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing

Special Issue on Ethics and Affective Computing

The pervasive presence of automated and autonomous systems necessitates the rapid growth of a relatively new area of inquiry called machine ethics. If machines are going to be turned loose on their own to kill and heal, explore and decide, the need for designing them to be moral becomes pressing. This need, in turn, penetrates to the very foundations of ethics as robot designers strive to build systems that comply. Fuzzy intuitions will not do when computational clarity is required. So, machine ethics also asks the discipline of ethics to make itself clear. The truth is that at present we do not know how to make it so. Rule-based approaches are being tried even in light of an acknowledged difficulty to formalize moral behavior, and it is already common to hear that introducing affects into machines may be necessary in order to make machines behave morally. From this perspective, affective computing may be morally required by machine ethics.

On the other hand, building machines with artificial affects might carry with it negative ethical consequences. In order to make humans more willing to accept robots and other automated computational devices, creating them to display emotion will be a help, since if we like them, we will, no doubt, be more willing to welcome them. We might even pay dearly to have them. But do artificial affects deceive? Will they catch us with our defenses down, and do we have to worry about Plato's caveat in the Republic that one of the best ways to be unjust is to appear just? Automated agents that seem like persons might appear congenial, even as any moral regard is ignored, making them dangerous culprits indistinguishable from automated "friends." In this light, machine ethics might demand that we exercise great caution in using affective computing. In radical cases, it might even demand that we not use it at all.

We would seem to have here a quandary. No doubt there are others. The purpose of this volume is to explore the range of ethical issues related to affective computing. Is affective computing necessary for making artificial agents moral? If so, why and how? Where does affective computing require moral caution? In what cases do benefits outweigh the moral risks? Etc.

Invited Authors:

Roddy Cowie (Queen's University, Belfast)
Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford)
Matthias Scheutz (Tufts University)

Papers must not have been previously published, with the exception that substantial extensions of conference papers can be considered. The authors will be required to follow the Author’s Guide for manuscript submission to the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing at http://www.computer.org/portal/web/tac/author. Papers are due by March 1st, 2011, and should be submitted electronically at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/taffc-cs. Please select the "SI - Ethics 2011" manuscript type upon submission. For further information, please contact guest editor, Anthony Beavers at afbeavers@gmail.com.

Willow Garage Ready to Market Beer-Fetching, Pool-Shooting Robot

2010-08-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

You Could Own A Pool-Shooting, Beer-Fetching Willow Garage Robot

Autonomy and Accountability in Robot Wars

2010-08-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

Vivek (Vik) Kanwar has written an article titled, Post-Human Humanitarian Law: The Law of War in the Age of Robotic Warfare, that has been published by the Social Science Research Network.

Abstract:
This Review Essay surveys the recent literature on the tensions between of autonomy and accountability in robotic warfare. Four books, taken together, suggest an original account of fundamental changes taking place in the field of IHL: P.W. Singer’s book Wired for War: the Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (2009), William H. Boothby’s Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict (2009), Armin Krishnan’s Killer Robots: Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons (2009), and Ronald Arkin’s Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots (2009). This Review Essay argues that from the point of view of IHL the concern is not the introduction of robots into the battlefield, but the gradual removal of humans. In this way the issue of weapon autonomy marks a paradigmatic shift from the so-called “humanization” of IHL to possible post-human concerns.

P ≠ NP? Limits on Computing?

2010-08-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

An August 10th article in the NewScientist titled, P ≠ NP? It's bad news for the power of computing, reports that a mathematician Vinay Deolalikar has perhaps solved a major computational problem.

If the result stands, it would prove that the two classes P and NP are not identical, and impose severe limits on what computers can accomplish – implying that many tasks may be fundamentally, irreducibly complex.

For some problems – including factorisation – the result does not clearly say whether they can be solved quickly. But a huge sub-class of problems called "NP-complete" would be doomed. A famous example is the travelling salesman problem – finding the shortest route between a set of cities. Such problems can be checked quickly, but if P ≠ NP then there is no computer program that can complete them quickly from scratch.

Complexity theorists have given a favourable reception to Deolalikar's draft paper, but when the final version is released in a week's time the process of checking it will intensify.

Big Brother and the Iris Scanner

2010-08-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls "the most secure city in the world." In a partnership with Leon -- one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million -- GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live -- not to mention marketers.
"In the future, whether it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris," says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. . .
For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. "There's a lot of convenience to this--you'll have nothing to carry except your eyes," says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in." . . .
So will we live the future under iris scanners and constant Big Brother monitoring? According to Carter, eye scanners will soon be so cost-effective--between $50-$100 each--that in the not-too-distant future we'll have "billions and billions of sensors" across the globe.

From Fast Company: Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother

Moral Machines and the Threat of Ethical Nihilism

2010-08-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

A draft of a paper that reacts to Moral Machines is available online. See Moral Machines and the Threat of Ethical Nihilism.

Here's a quick statement of the paper's direction:

"In 2000, Allen, Varner and Zinser addressed the possibility of a Moral Turing Test (MTT) to judge the success of an automated moral agent (AMA), a theme that is repeated in Wallach and Allen (2009). While the authors are careful to note that a language-only test based on moral justifications, or reasons, would be inadequate, they consider a test based on moral behavior. “One way to shift the focus from reasons to actions,” they write, “might be to restrict the information available to the human judge in some way. Suppose the human judge in the MTT is provided with descriptions of actual, morally significant actions of a human and an AMA, purged of all references that would identify the agents. If the judge correctly identifies the machine at a level above chance, then the machine has failed the test” (206). While they are careful to note that indistinguishability between human and automated agents might set the bar for passing the test too low, such a test by its very nature decides the morality of an agent on the basis of appearances. Since there seems to be little else we could use to determine the success of an AMA, we may rightfully ask whether, analogous to the term "thinking" in other contexts, the term "moral" is headed for redescription here. Indeed, Wallach and Allen’s survey of the problem space of machine ethics forces the question of whether in fifty years (or less) one will be able to speak of a machine as being moral without expecting to be contradicted. Supposing the answer were yes, why might this invite concern? What is at stake? How might such a redescription of the term "moral" come about?"

Robot Ethics and Human Ethics

2010-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

A special issue of Ethics and Information Technology on "Robot Ethics and Human Ethics" has just been released. See http://www.springerlink.com/content/1388-1957/12/3/ for details.

"Rise of the Drones" -- Transcript of House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

2010-08-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

A transcript of testimony collected March 23, 2010, before the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is available from the Homeland Security Digital Library. It is titled: "Rise of the Drones: Unmanned Systems and the Future of War".

A full list of witness is listed below. Among the statements made are these:

"the United States government urgently needs publicly to declare the legal rationale behind its use of drones, and defend that legal rationale in the international community" — Kenneth Anderson, Washington College of Law, American University

"AUVSI’s over 6,000 members from industry, government organizations, and academia are committed to fostering and promoting unmanned systems and related technologies." — Michael S. Fagan Chair, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Advocacy Committee Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)

"The Department of Commerce believes the issue of missile proliferation has never been as important to our national security interests as it is now. A comprehensive export control system is already in place to protect our national security. As noted above, the Department of Commerce is committed to enhancements to that system as needed to ensure it continues to protect our national security." — Kevin Wolf, Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Bureau of Industry and Security

"Our industry growth is adversely affected by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) for export of certain UAS technologies, and by a lengthy license approval process by Political Military Defense Trade Controls (PM-DTC). AUVSI is an advocate for simplified export-control regulations and expedited license approvals for unmanned systems technologies." — Michael Fagan, AUVSI Chair

"I would advise an incremental approach similar to that used with remote-controlled systems: intelligence missions first, strike missions later. Given the complexity involved, I would also restrict initial strike missions to non-lethal weapons and combatant-only areas. One possible exception to this non-lethal recommendation would involve autonomous systems targeting submarines, where one only would have to identify friendly combatants, enemy combatants, and perhaps whales." — Edward Barrett, Director of Research, Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership U.S. Naval Academy

Witness list:

John F. Tierney, Chairman
Peter W. Singer, Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative The Brookings Institution
Edward Barrett, Director of Research, Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership U.S. Naval Academy
Kenneth Anderson, Professor, Washington College of Law American University
John Jackson, Professor of Unmanned Systems U.S. Naval War College
Michael Fagan, Chair, Unmanned Aerial Systems Advocacy Committee Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International
Michael J. Sullivan, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management U.S. Government Accountability Office
Dyke Weatherington, Deputy, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Planning Taskforce Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, U.S. Department of Defense

NYTIMES Profiles The Lifeboat Foundation

2010-07-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit that seeks to protect people from some seriously catastrophic technology-related events. It funds research that would prevent a situation where technology has run amok, sort of like a pre-Fringe Unit.

The organization has a ton of areas that it’s looking into, ranging from artificial intelligence to asteroids. A particular interest for the group revolves around building shields and lots of them.

For example, there’s talk of a Neuroethics Shield – “to prevent abuse in the areas of neuropharmaceuticals, neurodevices, and neurodiagnostics. Worst cases include enslaving the world’s population or causing everyone to commit suicide.”

And then there’s a Personality Preserver that would help people keep their personalities intact and a Nano Shield to protect against overly aggressive nano creatures.

Read the full article by Ashless Vance titled, The Lifeboat Foundation: Battling Asteroids, Nanobots and A.I.

REX, Wheelchair Bound Are Up And About With Robot Exoskeleton

2010-07-25T08:23:00.000-07:00