Allenby reviews Robot Ethics in Nature

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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