Schlagwort: Berlin Kolloquium

Publikationen, Tagungen

A Solution to the Nursing Crisis?

„In Germany, around four million people will be dependent on care and nursing in 2030. Already today there is talk of a nursing crisis, which is likely to intensify further in view of demographic developments in the coming years. Fewer and fewer young people will be available to the labour market as potential carers for the elderly. Experts estimate that there will be a shortage of around half a million nursing staff in Germany by 2030. Given these dramatic forecasts, are nursing robots possibly the solution to the problem? Scientists from the disciplines of computer science, robotics, medicine, nursing science, social psychology, and philosophy explored this question at a Berlin conference of the Daimler and Benz Foundation. The machine ethicist and conference leader Professor Oliver Bendel first of all stated that many people had completely wrong ideas about care robots: ‚In the media there are often pictures or illustrations that do not correspond to reality‘.“ (Die Welt, 14 June 2019) With these words an article in the German newspaper Die Welt begins. Norbert Lossau describes the Berlin Colloquium, which took place on 22 May 2019, in detail. The article is available in English and German. So are robots a solution to the nursing crisis? Oliver Bendel denies this. They can be useful for the caregiver and the patient. But they don’t solve the big problems.

Fig.: The Pepper robot at the Berlin Colloquium (photo: Daimler and Benz Foundation)

Tagungen, Vorträge

Developing Ethics for Eldercare Robots

Prof. Dr. Susan L. Anderson, one of the most famous machine ethicists in the world, attended the 23rd Berlin Colloquium. She summarized her talk („Developing Ethics for Eldercare Robots“) in the brochure of the event with regard to the technology of care robots as follows: „Ideally, we would like eldercare robots to be able make correct ethical decisions on their own. This poses many challenges for machine ethicists. There are those who claim that ethics cannot be computed, that ethics is subjective, and/or that it makes no sense to speak of a robot as being an ethical agent. I argue to the contrary, maintaining that it is possible to represent numerically the ethical dilemmas with which an eldercare robot might be presented; and the robot could be given an ethical principle, derived from cases where ethicists agree as to the correct answer, to compute which of the possible actions it could perform at a given moment in time is the best one. It can also explain why it did what it did, if challenged. The robot will not be a full ethical agent, lacking some qualities of human agents; but it is all we need, and even desire.“ Susan L. Anderson had been invited by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel, who is himself a machine ethicist.

Fig.: Susan L. Anderson together with Michael Anderson (photo: Daimler and Benz Foundation)

Tagungen, Vorträge

An Ethical Care Robot

Prof. Dr. Michael Anderson, one of the most famous machine ethicists in the world, attended the 23rd Berlin Colloquium. He summarized his presentation („An Ethical Care Robot“) in the brochure of the event with regard to the technology of care robots as follows: As with any technology, „its advantages need to be tempered with its possible disadvantages such as fewer employment opportunities and patient isolation“. „Further, given the intimate nature of this technology, it is of paramount importance that it behaves in an ethical manner towards its users. To insure ethical behavior from such technology, we maintain that its actions should be guided by a set of ethical values. As it is unrealistic to expect those with the expertise necessary to develop such technology will be equally competent in its ethical dimensions, we also maintain that this set of values be abstracted from a consensus of ethicists. To this end, we propose a case-supported, principle-based behavior paradigm where behavior of autonomous machines is directed by domain-specific ethical principles abstracted from the judgements of ethicists on simple, agreed upon cases. As ethics entails more than simply not taking improper action but choosing the best action in a given situation, we advocate that every action a care robot takes be determined by such ethical principles. As transparency will be important in such systems, ethical principles and the cases from which they have been derived have the added benefit of serving as support for why a particular action was chosen over another. To show the feasibility of the proposed paradigm, we have developed a principle in the domain of elder care and instantiated it in a SoftBank Robotics NAO robot situated in a simulated eldercare environment.“ Michael Anderson had been invited by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel, who is himself a machine ethicist.

Fig.: Michael Anderson in Berlin (photo: Daimler and Benz Foundation)