ethics & robots west and east ラファエル・カプーロ steinbeis transfer institut –...

Ethics & Robots West and East

ラファエル・カプーロhttp://www.capurro.de/home-jp.html

Steinbeis Transfer Institut – Information Ethics (STI-IE)http://sti-ie.de

CybernicsUniversity of Tsukuba, Japanhttp://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/index.html

September 30, 2009

last update: August 13, 2009

R. Capurro: Cybernics Salon 2

IPS Waseda University


Sony: Aibo


RoboCup


Human-Robot Interaction

"Robots that look human tend to be a big hit with young children and the elderly," Hiroshi Kobayashi, Tokyo University of Science professor and Saya's developer, said yesterday. "Children even start crying when they are scolded."



"Simply turning our grandparents over to teams of robots abrogates our society's responsibility to each other, and encourages a loss of touch with reality for this already mentally and physically challenged population," Kobayashi said.



Noel Sharkey, robotics expert and professor at the University of Sheffield, believes robots can serve as an educational aid in inspiring interest in science, but they can't replace humans.


Human-Robot Interaction http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/12/content_10995694.htm

Kobayashi says Saya is just meant to help people and warns against getting hopes up too high for its possibilities. "The robot has no intelligence. It has no ability to learn. It has no identity," he said. "It is just a tool.„


HR-Interaction in Japanhttp://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKT27506220080408

TOKYO (Reuters) - Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in grayingJapan by 2025, a thinktank says, helping to avert worker shortages as the country's population shrinks.


HR-Interaction in Japan

Japan faces a 16 percent slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration.



The thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, says robots could help fill the gaps, ranging from microsized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners.



Rather than each robot replacing one person, the foundation said in a report that robots could make time for people to focus on more important things.“



What kind of „more important things“? This is an ethical question.



„Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen ($21 billion) of elderly insurance payments in 2025 by using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don't have to rely on human nursing care, the foundation said in its report.



What are the consequences for relying on robot nursing? This is an ethical question.



Caregivers would save more than an hour a day if robots helped look after children, older people and did some housework, it added. Robotic duties could include reading books out loud or helping bathe the elderly.“



How will children and elderly react to robots taking „care“ of them? This is an ethical question.



"Seniors are pushing back their retirement until they are 65 years old, day care centers are being built so that more women can work during the day, and there is a move to increase the quota of foreign laborers. But none of these can beat the shrinking workforce," said Takao Kobayashi, who worked on the study.



"Robots are important because they could help in some ways to alleviate such shortage of the labor force."



How far will they alleviate such shortage of the labor force? And with what consequences? This is an ethical question.



Kobayashi said changes was still needed for robots to make a big impact on the workforce.

"There's the expensive price tag, the functions of the robots still need to improve, and then there are the mindsets of people," he said.

"People need to have the will to use the robots."



The „mindsets of people“: This is THE ethical question!


Why Ethics of Robots?

Ethics is thinking about human rules of good/bad behavior: Towards each other Towards non-human living beings Towards the environment Towards artificial products Towards other societies or nations Towards the gods


Why Ethics of Robots?

Robots behave according to rules we program

We are responsible for their behavior But as they are „autonomous“ they can

„decide“ what to do or not in a specific situation

This is the human/robot moral dilemma


Ethics of Robots: West and East

Rougly speaking: Europe: Deontology (Autonomy, Human

Dignity, Privacy, Anthropocentrism): Scepticism with regard to robots

USA (and anglo-saxon tradition): Utilitarian Ethics: will robots make „us“ more happy?

Eastern Tradition (Buddhism): Robots as one more partner in the global interaction of things


Ethics & Robots: West and East

Morality and Ethics: Ethics as critical reflection (or

problematization) of morality Ethics is the science of morals as

robotics is the science of robots



Different ontic or concrete historical moral traditions, for instance in Japan: Seken (trad. Japanese

morality), Shakai (imported Western morality) and Ikai (old animistic tradition)

In the „Far West“: Ethics of the Good (Plato, Aristotle), Christian Ethics, Utilitarian Ethics, Deontological Ethics (Kant)



Ontological dimension: Being or (Buddhist) Nothingness as the space of open possibilities that allow us to critizise ontic moralities

Always related to basic moods (like sadness, happiness, astonishment, …) through which the uniqueness of the world and human existence is experienced (differently in different cultures)


Asimo‘s evolutionhttp://www.rob.cs.tu-bs.de/teaching/courses/seminar/Laufen_Mensch_vs_Roboter/


ありがとうございました。

ethics & robots west and east ラファエル・カプーロ steinbeis transfer institut –...

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