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

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

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.

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

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

Autonomy and Accountability in Robot Wars

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?

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

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