Polizeieinheiten auf der ganzen Welt nutzen seit Jahren mobile Roboter, etwa zum Sprengen von Objekten oder zum Überwachen von Arealen. Die Mitnahme von Spot bei einem Einsatz des NYPD hat für einigen Wirbel gesorgt. An der Hochschule für Wirtschaft erforscht man den Einsatz von Servicerobotern und sozialen Robotern in der Polizeiarbeit. Im April 2022 wurde das Paper „Robots in Policing“ von Oliver Bendel bei der Robophilosophy 2022 angenommen. Es zeigt auf, wie Roboter die Polizei als soziale Einrichtung und deren Arbeit als soziale Arbeit verändern können. In einer Abschlussarbeit zu Polizeirobotern an der Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW, vorgelegt von Alan Chethipuzha und betreut von Oliver Bendel, wurden Erkenntnisse aus einer nichtrepräsentativen Onlineumfrage und zwei Experteninterviews verarbeitet. Die Akzeptanz der Befragten in Bezug auf autonome Polizeiroboter in der Schweiz ist sehr niedrig. Das Sammeln von personenbezogenen Daten mit Hilfe von mobilen Robotern würde als Eingriff in die Privatsphäre gesehen. Bürger fühlten sich konstant beobachtet, wenn ein autonomer Roboter mit Kameras auf den Straßen unterwegs wäre. Die beiden Experten – ein Robotiker und ein Chef der Spezialfahndung in der Kriminalabteilung – sehen zudem aktuell keine möglichen Einsatzgebiete für autonome Polizeiroboter in der Schweiz sowie auch keinen Mehrwert. Ferngesteuerte Roboter wie Drohnen und Raupenfahrzeuge hingegen haben ihrer Ansicht nach jetzt und künftig eine hohe Bedeutung. Die Abschlussarbeit „Serviceroboter und soziale Roboter in der Polizeiarbeit“ von Alan Chethipuzha liegt seit Juli 2022 vor.
Robophilosophy 2022 at the University of Helsinki is the fifth event in the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series. It „will explore the societal significance of social robots for the future of social institutions with its usual broad scope, embracing both theoretical and practical angles“ (CfP Robophilosophy). It „is an invitation to philosophers and other SSH researchers, as well as researchers in social robotics and HRI, to investigate from interdisciplinarily informed perspectives whether and how social robotics as an interdisciplinary endeavour can contribute to the ability of our institutions to perform their functions in society“ (CfP Robophilosophy). Social institutions include retirement and nursing homes, strip clubs and brothels, monasteries and seminaries, and police departments. Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW) will have the opportunity to present his paper entitled „Robots in Policing“ in session 1, „Robots in Law and Policing“. Cindy Friedman („Granting Negative Rights to Humanoid Robots“) and Jakob Stenseke („The Use and Abuse of Normative Ethics for Moral Machines“) will speak after him. In addition, a poster by Katharina Kühne and Melinda Mende (University of Potsdam) as well als Oliver Bendel entitled „Tamagotchi on our couch: Are social robots perceived as pets?“ was accepted. The full program is now available online.
Robophilosophy 2022 is the fifth event in the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series. It „will explore the societal significance of social robots for the future of social institutions with its usual broad scope, embracing both theoretical and practical angles“ (CfP Robophilosophy). It „is an invitation to philosophers and other SSH researchers, as well as researchers in social robotics and HRI, to investigate from interdisciplinarily informed perspectives whether and how social robotics as an interdisciplinary endeavour can contribute to the ability of our institutions to perform their functions in society“ (CfP Robophilosophy). Social institutions include retirement and nursing homes, strip clubs and brothels, monasteries and seminaries, and police departments. As announced by the organizers on April 15, Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW) will have the opportunity to present his paper entitled „Robots in Policing“ at the conference. It is about how service robots and social robots are changing policing as „social work“. In addition, a poster by Katharina Kühne and Melinda Mende (University of Potsdam) as well als Oliver Bendel entitled „Tamagotchi on our couch: Are social robots perceived as pets?“ was accepted.
Robophilosophy 2022 is the fifth event in the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series. The first call for papers (CfP) was published in November 2021, the second at the end of 2021, and the final on February 25, 2022. The extended deadline for submissions of extended abstracts and full papers is March 10, 2022. The event „will explore the societal significance of social robots for the future of social institutions with its usual broad scope, embracing both theoretical and practical angles“ (CfP Robophilosophy). It „is an invitation to philosophers and other SSH researchers, as well as researchers in social robotics and HRI, to investigate from interdisciplinarily informed perspectives whether and how social robotics as an interdisciplinary endeavour can contribute to the ability of our institutions to perform their functions in society“ (CfP Robophilosophy). Topics of interest are robots and social institutions in general, robots in law and policing, robots in healthcare, and robots and social justice, amongst others. The conference will be held at the University of Helsinki in Finland from August 16-19, 2022. More information via www.rp2022.org.
Robophilosophy 2022 is the fifth event in the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series. The first call for papers (CfP) was published in November 2021, and the second at the end of 2021. The extended deadline for submissions of extended abstracts and full papers is February 28, 2022. The event „will explore the societal significance of social robots for the future of social institutions with its usual broad scope, embracing both theoretical and practical angles“ (CfP Robophilosophy). It „is an invitation to philosophers and other SSH researchers, as well as researchers in social robotics and HRI, to investigate from interdisciplinarily informed perspectives whether and how social robotics as an interdisciplinary endeavour can contribute to the ability of our institutions to perform their functions in society“ (CfP Robophilosophy). Topics of interest are robots and social institutions in general, robots in law and policing, robots in healthcare, and robots and social justice, amongst others. The conference will be held at the University of Helsinki in Finland from August 16-19, 2022. More information via www.rp2022.org.
How do social robots emerge from simple, soft shapes? As part of their final thesis at the School of Business FHNW, Nhi Tran Hoang Yen and Thang Hoang Vu from Ho Chi Minh City have answered this question posed by their supervisor Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. They have submitted eleven proposals for novel robots. All are shown on informationsethik.net. The eighth proposal is PBotvac (go here to the previous). In the near future, two or three service robots will be found in many households. Children should understand from the beginning what the possibilities and limitations are. It may help them to have a toy that provides basic functions, but is very simple and harmless – and cheap. One such toy is PBotvac. It is essentially made of cardboard. With it, children learn the purpose of a robot vacuum cleaner and to handle it in an appropriate manner. Two books by Oliver Bendel on social robots – „300 Keywords Soziale Robotik“ and „Soziale Roboter“ – will be published in October 2021.
Fig.: PBotvac (image: Trần Hoàng Yến Nhi & Hoàng Vũ Thắng, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Việt Nam)
From 18 to 21 August 2020, the Robophilosophy conference took place. Due to the pandemic, participants could not meet in Aarhus as originally planned, but only in virtual space. Nevertheless, the conference was a complete success. At the end of the year, the conference proceedings were published by IOS Press, including the paper „The Morality Menu Project“ by Oliver Bendel. From the abstract: „The discipline of machine ethics examines, designs and produces moral machines. The artificial morality is usually pre-programmed by a manufacturer or developer. However, another approach is the more flexible morality menu (MOME). With this, owners or users replicate their own moral preferences onto a machine. A team at the FHNW implemented a MOME for MOBO (a chatbot) in 2019/2020. In this article, the author introduces the idea of the MOME, presents the MOBO-MOME project and discusses advantages and disadvantages of such an approach. It turns out that a morality menu could be a valuable extension for certain moral machines.“ The book can be ordered on the publisher’s website. An author’s copy is available here.
The book „Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics“ (eds. Marco Nørskov, Johanna Seibt, and Oliver Santiago Quick) was published in December 2020 by IOS Press. From the publisher’s information: „Robophilosophy conferences have been the world’s largest venues for humanities research in and on social robotics. The book at hand presents the proceedings of Robophilosophy Conference 2020: Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics, the fourth event in the international, biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series, which brought together close to 400 participants from 29 countries. The speakers of the conference, whose contributions are collected in this volume, were invited to offer concrete proposals for how the Humanities can help to shape a future where social robotics is guided by the goals of enhancing socio-cultural values rather than by utility alone. The book is divided into 3 parts; Abstracts of Plenaries, which contains 6 plenary sessions; Session Papers, with 44 papers under 8 thematic categories; and Workshops, containing 25 items on 5 selected topics.“ (Website IOS Press) Contributors include Robert Sparrow, Alan Winfield, Aimee van Wynsberghe, John Danaher, Johanna Seibt, Marco Nørskov, Peter Remmers, John P. Sullins, and Oliver Bendel.
Fig.: A photo from the 2018 conference (with Hiroshi Ishiguro)
Eine der weltweit wichtigsten Konferenzen für Roboterphilosophie und soziale Robotik, die ROBOPHILOSOPHY, fand vom 18. bis 21. August 2020 statt, nicht in Aarhus (Dänemark), wie ursprünglich geplant, sondern – wegen der COVID-19-Pandemie – in virtueller Form. Organisatoren und Moderatoren waren Marco Nørskov und Johanna Seibt. Ein beträchtlicher Teil der Vorträge war der Maschinenethik verpflichtet, etwa „Moral Machines“ (Aleksandra Kornienko), „Permissibility-Under-a-Description Reasoning for Deontological Robots“ (Felix Lindner) und „The Morality Menu Project“ (Oliver Bendel). Die Keynotes stammten von Selma Šabanović (Indiana University Bloomington), Robert Sparrow (Monash University), Shannon Vallor (The University of Edinburgh), Alan Winfield (University of the West of England), Aimee van Wynsberghe (Delft University of Technology) und John Danaher (National University of Ireland). Winfield zeigte sich in seinem herausragenden Referat skeptisch gegenüber moralischen Maschinen, woraufhin Bendel in der Diskussion deutlich machte, dass sie in manchen Bereichen nützlich, in anderen gefährlich sind, und die Bedeutung der Maschinenethik für die Erforschung der maschinellen und menschlichen Moral hervorhob, womit sich Winfield wiederum einverstanden zeigte. Die letzte Konferenz wurde 2018 in Wien durchgeführt. Keynoter waren damals u.a. Hiroshi Ishiguro, Joanna Bryson und Oliver Bendel. Die nächste ROBOPHILOSOPHY wird vermutlich, wie die Veranstalter am Ende der Veranstaltung, bekanntgaben, 2022 an der Universität Helsinki stattfinden.
A multi-stage HUGGIE project is currently underway at the School of Business FHNW under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. Ümmühan Korucu and Leonie Stocker (formerly Leonie Brogle) started with an online survey. The aim was to gain insights into how people of all ages and sexes judge a hug by a robot. In crises and catastrophes involving prolonged isolation, such as the COVID 19 pandemic, proxy hugs of this kind could well play a role. Prisons and longer journeys through space are also possible fields of applications. Nearly 300 people took part in the online survey. The evaluation is almost complete and the results are remarkable. Among other things, it was found that women want to be hugged by a robot that is bigger than them, and men want to be hugged by a robot that is smaller than them. Not only the size is relevant for the acceptance of robotic hugging: „An interesting input given by one of the participants was that it could be more pleasant to hug a robot if it smelled nicely, for example like chocolate.“ (Draft of Bachelor Thesis) Whether this is a typically Swiss view remains to be investigated. The results of the survey and the conclusions drawn from them for the design of HUGGIE will be compiled in a paper in the course of the year.
„Once we place so-called ’social robots‘ into the social practices of our everyday lives and lifeworlds, we create complex, and possibly irreversible, interventions in the physical and semantic spaces of human culture and sociality. The long-term socio-cultural consequences of these interventions is currently impossible to gauge.“ (Website Robophilosophy Conference) With these words the next Robophilosophy conference was announced. It would have taken place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 18 to 21 August 2019, but due to the COVID 19 pandemic it is being conducted online. One lecture will be given by Oliver Bendel. The abstract of the paper „The Morality Menu Project“ states: „Machine ethics produces moral machines. The machine morality is usually fixed. Another approach is the morality menu (MOME). With this, owners or users transfer their own morality onto the machine, for example a social robot. The machine acts in the same way as they would act, in detail. A team at the School of Business FHNW implemented a MOME for the MOBO chatbot. In this article, the author introduces the idea of the MOME, presents the MOBO-MOME project and discusses advantages and disadvantages of such an approach. It turns out that a morality menu can be a valuable extension for certain moral machines.“ In 2018 Hiroshi Ishiguro, Guy Standing, Catelijne Muller, Joanna Bryson, and Oliver Bendel had been keynote speakers. In 2020, Catrin Misselhorn, Selma Sabanovic, and Shannon Vallor will be presenting. More information via conferences.au.dk/robo-philosophy/.
„Once we place so-called ’social robots‘ into the social practices of our everyday lives and lifeworlds, we create complex, and possibly irreversible, interventions in the physical and semantic spaces of human culture and sociality. The long-term socio-cultural consequences of these interventions is currently impossible to gauge.“ (Website Robophilosophy Conference) With these words the next Robophilosophy conference is announced. It will take place from 18 to 21 August 2019 in Aarhus, Denmark. The CfP raises questions like that: „How can we create cultural dynamics with or through social robots that will not impact our value landscape negatively? How can we develop social robotics applications that are culturally sustainable? If cultural sustainability is relative to a community, what can we expect in a global robot market? Could we design human-robot interactions in ways that will positively cultivate the values we, or people anywhere, care about?“ (Website Robophilosophy Conference) In 2018 Hiroshi Ishiguro, Guy Standing, Catelijne Muller, Joanna Bryson, and Oliver Bendel had been keynote speakers. In 2020, Catrin Misselhorn, Selma Sabanovic, and Shannon Vallor will be presenting. More information via conferences.au.dk/robo-philosophy/.
Robots are repeatedly damaged or destroyed. The hitchBOT is a well-known example. But also the security robot K5 has become a victim of attacks several times. The latest case is described in the magazine Wired: „Every day for 10 months, Knightscope K5 patrolled the parking garage across the street from the city hall in Hayward, California. An autonomous security robot, it rolled around by itself, taking video and reading license plates. Locals had complained the garage was dangerous, but K5 seemed to be doing a good job restoring safety. Until the night of August 3, when a stranger came up to K5, knocked it down, and kicked it repeatedly, inflicting serious damage.“ (Wired, 29 August 2019) The author investigates the question of whether one may attack robots. Of course you shouldn’t damage other people’s property. But what if the robot is a spy, a data collector, a profile creator? Digital self-defence (which exploits digital as well as analog possibilities) seems to be a proven tool not only in Hong Kong, but also in the US and Europe. The rights of robots that some demand cannot be a serious problem. Robots do not have rights. They feel nothing, they do not suffer, they have no consciousness. „So punch the robot, I tell you! Test the strength of your sociopolitical convictions on this lunk of inorganic matter!“ (Wired, 29 August 2019)
Robophilosophy or robot philosophy is a field of philosophy that deals with robots (hardware and software robots) as well as with enhancement options such as artificial intelligence. It is not only about the practice and history of development, but also the history of ideas, starting with the works of Homer and Ovid up to science fiction books and movies. Disciplines such as epistemology, ontology, aesthetics and ethics, including information and machine ethics, are involved. The new platform robophilosophy.com was founded in July 2019 by Oliver Bendel. He invited several authors to write with him about robophilosophy, robot law, information ethics, machine ethics, robotics, and artificial intelligence. All of them have a relevant background. Oliver Bendel studied philosophy as well as information science and made his doctoral thesis about anthropomorphic software agents. He has been researching in the fields of information ethics and machine ethics for years.
Service robots are becoming ever more pervasive in society-at-large. They are present in our apartments and our streets. They are found in hotels, hospitals, and care homes, in shopping malls, and on company grounds. In doing so, various challenges arise. Service robots consume energy, they take up space in ever more crowded cities, sometimes leading us to collide with them and stumble over them. They monitor us, they communicate with us and retain our secrets on their data drives. In relation to this, they can be hacked, kidnapped and abused. The first section of the article „Service Robots from the Perspectives of Information and Machine Ethics“ by Oliver Bendel presents different types of service robots – like security, transport, therapy, and care robots – and discusses the moral implications that arise from their existence. Information ethics and machine ethics will form the basis for interrogating these moral implications. The second section discusses the draft for a patient declaration, by which people can determine whether and how they want to be treated and cared for by a robot. The article is part of the new book „Envisioning Robots in Society – Power, Politics, and Public Space“ that reproduces the talks of the Robophilosophy 2018 conference in Vienna (IOS Press, Amsterdam 2018).
At the conference „Robophilosophy“ in Vienna in February 2018, Hiroshi Ishiguro spoke about his geminoid, which he adjusts every few years according to his own statement. Looking at him one could assume he was adjusted too, considering how much younger he seems than on older photos showing him with his artificial twin. After his speech, the audience fired questions at him. One question was why did he build robots at all when there was virtual reality? He answered because of the presence in space. Only holograms could come close to such a presence in future. Some universities are now planning to have lecturers appear as holograms in front of the students. This would actually be an alternative to the use of teaching robots and video-conferencing. Even interactions would be possible if the holograms or projections were connected to speech systems. Dr. David Lefevre, director of Imperial’s Edtech Lab, told the BBC: „The alternative is to use video-conferencing software but we believe these holograms have a much greater sense of presence“. The Gatebox, which was recently launched on the market, and a publication by Oliver Bendel („Hologram Girl“), which will be available at the beginning of 2019, show that love relationships with holograms or projections are also possible.
Hiroshi Ishiguro von der Universität Osaka war einer der Keynote-Sprecher auf der Robophilosophy-Konferenz in Wien vom 14. bis 17. Februar 2018. Der Japaner baut, wie einige Ingenieure, humanoide Roboter. Allerdings sind diese keine Karikaturen wie Pepper. Sie sind möglichst detailgetreue Kopien von realen oder fiktionalen Menschen. Ein Beispiel ist der Geminoid, der künstliche Doppelgänger des Robotikers. In letzter Zeit konzentriert sich Ishiguro auf weibliche Roboter. Eine Frau aus dem Publikum fragte ihn, warum dies so sei. Seine Antwort war, dass weibliche Roboter alle Menschen ansprechen würden. Männliche Roboter dagegen würden viele Menschen erschrecken, vor allem Kinder. Auch sein Geminoid. Eine andere Frage war, warum er überhaupt Kopien herstellen würde und nicht Fabelwesen, warum er also nicht etwas völlig Neues hervorbringen würde, anstatt Altes zu vervielfältigen. Seine Antwort war, daran würde er denken, aber er habe zuerst das eine machen wollen, bevor er sich an dem anderen versuchen würde. Eine weitere Frage war die nach dem Uncanny-Valley-Effekt. Die erstaunliche Antwort war, dass seine Roboter nicht mehr im unheimlichen Tal anzusiedeln seien. Dabei ist etwa der Geminoid geradezu ein Paradebeispiel für diesen Effekt. Das Publikum war sichtlich fasziniert und irritiert. Hiroshi Ishiguro ist ein wichtiger Visionär der Robotik.
„Robophilosophy 2018 – Envisioning Robots In Society: Politics, Power, And Public Space“ is the third event in the Robophilosophy Conference Series which focusses on robophilosophy, a new field of interdisciplinary applied research in philosophy, robotics, artificial intelligence and other disciplines. The main organizers are Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh, Dr. Janina Loh and Michael Funk. Plenary speakers are Joanna Bryson (Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, UK), Hiroshi Ishiguro (Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Osaka University, Japan), Guy Standing (Basic Income Earth Network and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK), Catelijne Muller (Rapporteur on Artificial Intelligence, European Economic and Social Committee), Robert Trappl (Head of the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Austria), Simon Penny (Department of Art, University of California, Irvine), Raja Chatila (IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in AI and Automated Systems, Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, France), Josef Weidenholzer (Member of the European Parliament, domains of automation and digitization), and Oliver Bendel (Institute for Information Systems, FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland). The conference will take place from 14 to 17 February 2018 in Vienna. More information via conferences.au.dk/robo-philosophy/.
