Robotics in Germany and Japan

This book comprehends an intercultural and interdisciplinary framework including current research fields like Roboethics, Hermeneutics of Technologies, Technology Assessment, Robotics in Japanese Popular Culture and Music Robots. Contributions on cultural interrelations, technical visions and essays are rounding out the content of this book

Challenging Robot Morality: An Ethical Debate on Humanoid Companions, Dataveillance, and Algorithms

In this thesis, I reflect on ethical, moral, and agenthood debates around social and humanoid robots in two ways. I focus on how the technological agency of social robots is understood in ethical canons by shifting from moral concerns in Robot Ethics to data-related ethical concerns in Media and Surveillance Studies. I then move to wider debates on morality, agenthood, and agencies in Machine and Computer Ethics research, so as to highlight that social robots, other robots, machines, and algorithmic structures are often moralised but not understood ethically. In that vein, I distinguish between these two terms to point to a wider critique on the anthropocentric and anthropomorphic tendency in ethical streams, so as to view technology from a morality-aligned standpoint. I undertake a critical survey of current ethical streams and, by doing so, I establish a transdisciplinary ethical discussion around social robots and algorithmic agencies. I undertake this research in two steps. First, I look at the use of humanoid social robots in elderly care, as discussed in Robot Ethics, and expand it with a view from Media and Surveillance Studies on data concern around robots. I hereby examine the social robot and the allocation of its ethical and moral agency as an anthropomorphised and humanoid companion, data tracking device, and Posthumanist ethical network of agencies. This is done to amplify the ethical concerns around its pseudo-agenthood and its potential position as dataveillance. Next, I move on to streams in the Philosophy of Technology (POT) and Machine/Computer Ethics. Here, I discuss concepts on machinic moral agency in digital systems. As I pass from the social robot as a humanoid pseudo-agent towards moralised algorithmic structures, I lay out wider conflicts in morality research streams. Specifically, I address their epistemological simplification and reduction of moral norms to digital code, as well as the increasing dissolvement of accountable agenthood within algorithmic systems. By creating a transdisciplinary investigation on techno-ethical and techno-moral canons and their agency models, I urge for a holistic ethics that, first, gives a greater focus to human agent accountability and moral concerns in the application of robots and, second, negotiates new moral or social norms around the use of robots or digital media structures. This is aligned with increasing concerns around the growing commodification of health data and the lack of transparency on data ownership and privacy infringement.University of Plymout

Anti-anthropomorphism and Its Limits

There is a diffuse sentiment that to anthropomorphize is a mild vice that people tend to do easily and pleasingly, but that an adult well educated person should avoid. In this paper it will be provided an elucidation of “anthropomorphism” in the field of common sense knowledge, the issue of animal rights, and about the use of humans as a model in the scientific explanation. It will be argued for a “constructive anthropomorphism,” i.e., the idea that anthropomorphism is a natural attitude to attribute human psychological features to other individuals, no matter they are actually rational agents, or not. If we know the “grammar” of this attitude, we can avoid the risks in overestimatinasg the environmental inputs toward anthropomor-phism and, at the same time, take the heuristic advantages of anthropomor-phism in the use of human mind as a model for both everyday circumstances and scientific enterprise

Colonial world-making in future technological landscapes: a qualitative comparative case study of the Sophia the Robot and Miquela Projects

Future technologies are being produced by private actors in projects promising radical societal changes. Little attention is given to the intention of these private actors. This increases the risk of missing the ways in which private political and economic interests shape future technological imagining. From Jeff Bezos floating space coloniesto Mark Zuckerberg's reality bending ‘metaverse', private companies envision futures that will be far better than present society. However, factors that caused the need for societal transformation are being reworked into the imaginings of future landscapes promising. Through a comparative case study analysis of the robot projects of Sophia the Robot and Miquela Sousa, the argument presented in this research study is thatthe improved and inspiring future landscapes each robot project presents cannot be achieved. This is because the ideological framing of each project replicates the logic of modernity, which functions on structures of oppression. By applying colonial and modern examples from the past and present, this study illustrates the ways in which systems of oppression – such as white supremacy and enslavement- are reproduced in the imaginings of the future in private actors' technological projects as well as the technologies itself

Embodied Digital Technologies: First Insights in the Social and Legal Perception of Robots and Users of Prostheses

New bionic technologies and robots are becoming increasingly common in workspaces and private spheres. It is thus crucial to understand concerns regarding their use in social and legal terms and the qualities they should possess to be accepted as 'co-workers'. Previous research in these areas used the Stereotype Content Model to investigate, for example, attributions of Warmth and Competence towards people who use bionic prostheses, cyborgs, and robots. In the present study, we propose to differentiate the Warmth dimension into the dimensions of Sociability and Morality to gain deeper insight into how people with or without bionic prostheses are perceived. In addition, we extend our research to the perception of robots. Since legal aspects need to be considered if robots are expected to be 'co-workers', for the first time, we also evaluated current perceptions of robots in terms of legal aspects. We conducted two studies: In Study 1, participants rated visual stimuli of individuals with or without disabilities and low- or high-tech prostheses, and robots of different levels of Anthropomorphism in terms of perceived Competence, Sociability, and Morality. In Study 2, participants rated robots of different levels of Anthropomorphism in terms of perceived Competence, Sociability, and Morality, and additionally, Legal Personality, and Decision-Making Authority. We also controlled for participants' personality. Results showed that attributions of Competence and Morality varied as a function of the technical sophistication of the prostheses. For robots, Competence attributions were negatively related to Anthropomorphism. Perception of Sociability, Morality, Legal Personality, and Decision-Making Authority varied as functions of Anthropomorphism. Overall, this study contributes to technological design, which aims to ensure high acceptance and minimal undesirable side effects, both with regard to the application of bionic instruments and robotics. Additionally, first insights into whether more anthropomorphized robots will need to be considered differently in terms of legal practice are given

Designing companions, designing tools : social robots, developers, and the elderly in Japan

Ce mémoire de maîtrise trace la généalogie d’un robot social, de sa conception à ses différentes utilisations et la manière dont les utilisateurs interagissent avec. A partir d’un terrain de six mois dans une start-up et deux maisons de retraite au Japon, j’interroge la création de Pepper, un robot social crée par la compagnie japonais SoftBank. Pepper a été créé de façon à être humanoïde mais pas trop, ainsi que perçu comme adorable et charmant. Par la suite, je décris comment Pepper et d’autres robots sociaux sont utilisés, à la fois par des développeurs, mais aussi par des personnes âgées, et je souligne une tension existante entre leur utilisation comme des compagnons et des outils. En me basant sur l’anthropologie ontologique et la phénoménologie, j’examine la construction du robot comme une entité avec laquelle il est possible d’interagir, notamment à cause de sa conception en tant qu’acteur social, ontologiquement ambigu, et qui peut exprimer de l’affect. En m’intéressant aux interactions multimodales, et en particulier le toucher, je classifie trois fonctions remplies par l’interaction : découverte, contrôle, et l’expression de l’affect. Par la suite, je questionne ces actes d’agir vers et s’ils peuvent être compris comme une interaction, puisqu’ils n’impliquent pas que le robot soit engagé. J’argumente qu’une interaction est un échange de sens entre des agents engagés et incarnés. Il y a effectivement parfois un échange de sens entre le robot et son utilisateur, et le robot est un artefact incarné. Cependant, seule l’impression d’intersubjectivité est nécessaire à l’interaction, plutôt que sa réelle présence.This master’s thesis traces a genealogy of a social robot through its conception to its various uses and the ways users interact with it. Drawing on six months of fieldwork in a start-up and two nursing homes in Japan, I first investigate the genesis of a social robot created by SoftBank, a Japanese multinational telecommunications company. This social robot is quite humanlike, made to be cute and have an adorable personality. While developers constitute one of the user populations, this robot, along with several others, is also used by elderly residents in nursing homes. By analyzing the uses of these populations, I underline the tension between the social robot as a companion and a tool. Drawing on ontological anthropology and phenomenology I look at how the robot is constructed as an entity that can be interacted with, through its conception as an ontologically ambiguous, social actor, that can express affect. Looking at multimodal interaction, and especially touch, I then classify three functions they fulfill: discovery, control, and the expression of affect, before questioning whether this acting towards the robot that does not imply acting from the robot, can be considered a form of interaction. I argue that interaction is the exchange of meaning between embodied, engaged participants. Meaning can be exchanged between robots and humans and the robot can be seen as embodied, but only the appearance of intersubjectivity is enough, rather than its actual presence