First Steps Towards an Ethics of Robots and Artificial Intelligence

This article offers an overview of the main first-order ethical questions raised by robots and Artificial Intelligence (RAIs) under five broad rubrics: functionality, inherent significance, rights and responsibilities, side-effects, and threats. The first letter of each rubric taken together conveniently generates the acronym FIRST. Special attention is given to the rubrics of functionality and inherent significance given the centrality of the former and the tendency to neglect the latter in virtue of its somewhat nebulous and contested character. In addition to exploring some illustrative issues arising under each rubric, the article also emphasizes a number of more general themes. These include: the multiplicity of interacting levels on which ethical questions about RAIs arise, the need to recognise that RAIs potentially implicate the full gamut of human values (rather than exclusively or primarily some readily identifiable sub-set of ethical or legal principles), and the need for practically salient ethical reflection on RAIs to be informed by a realistic appreciation of their existing and foreseeable capacities

Capital as Artificial Intelligence

This article examines science-fictional allegorizations of Soviet-style planned economies, financial markets, autonomous trading algorithms, and global capitalism writ large as nonhuman artificial intelligences, focussing primarily on American science fiction of the Cold War period. Key fictional texts discussed include Star Trek, Isaac Asimov\u27s Machine stories, Terminator, Kurt Vonnegut\u27s Player Piano (1952), Charles Stross\u27s Accelerando (2005), and the short stories of Philip K. Dick. The final section of the article discusses Kim Stanley Robinson\u27s novel 2312 (2012) within the contemporary political context of accelerationist anticapitalism, whose advocates propose working with “the machines” rather than against them

Double elevation: Autonomous weapons and the search for an irreducible law of war

What should be the role of law in response to the spread of artificial intelligence in war? Fuelled by both public and private investment, military technology is accelerating towards increasingly autonomous weapons, as well as the merging of humans and machines. Contrary to much of the contemporary debate, this is not a paradigm change; it is the intensification of a central feature in the relationship between technology and war: Double elevation, above one's enemy and above oneself. Elevation above one's enemy aspires to spatial, moral, and civilizational distance. Elevation above oneself reflects a belief in rational improvement that sees humanity as the cause of inhumanity and de-humanization as our best chance for humanization. The distance of double elevation is served by the mechanization of judgement. To the extent that judgement is seen as reducible to algorithm, law becomes the handmaiden of mechanization. In response, neither a focus on questions of compatibility nor a call for a 'ban on killer robots' help in articulating a meaningful role for law. Instead, I argue that we should turn to a long-standing philosophical critique of artificial intelligence, which highlights not the threat of omniscience, but that of impoverished intelligence. Therefore, if there is to be a meaningful role for law in resisting double elevation, it should be law encompassing subjectivity, emotion and imagination, law irreducible to algorithm, a law of war that appreciates situated judgement in the wielding of violence for the collective

A mixed-signal early vision chip with embedded image and programming memories and digital I/O

From a system level perspective, this paper presents a 128 × 128 flexible and reconfigurable Focal-Plane Analog Programmable Array Processor, which has been designed as a single chip in a 0.35μm standard digital 1P-5M CMOS technology. The core processing array has been designed to achieve high-speed of operation and large-enough accuracy (∼ 7bit) with low power consumption. The chip includes on-chip program memory to allow for the execution of complex, sequential and/or bifurcation flow image processing algorithms. It also includes the structures and circuits needed to guarantee its embedding into conventional digital hosting systems: external data interchange and control are completely digital. The chip contains close to four million transistors, 90% of them working in analog mode. The chip features up to 330GOPs (Giga Operations per second), and uses the power supply (180GOP/Joule) and the silicon area (3.8 GOPS/mm2) efficiently, as it is able to maintain VGA processing throughputs of 100Frames/s with about 15 basic image processing tasks on each frame

Embodying Vulnerability: A Feminist Theory of the Person

Fokus i denna avhandling utgör läkares och civilingenjörers kunskaps- och identifikationsprocesser under utbildning och arbete – vilka studeras som utsnitt ur levnadsbanor. Syftet är att beskriva och tolka relationen mellan högre utbildning och arbete, dels utifrån föreställningar i forskning och policy, dels utifrån människors subjektivitet, vardagserfarenheter och liv. Studien baseras på textanalys och intervjuer med läkare och IT-ingenjörer under de första åren i arbetslivet och yrket. Kännetecknande är att processer följs över tid genom en longitudinell design. Den teoretiska ramen struktureras runt tre länkade teman: Kunskap och dynamiker i det samtida samhället; Högre utbildning och arbete; Människors formbarhet. Reflexiv tolkning utgör metodologisk ansats. Begreppen flexibilitet, stabilitet och ambivalens används dialektiskt vid analys av empiriska data. Avhandlingen visar att människors subjektivitet och vardagserfarenheter samspelar med generella föreställningar och sammanhangens reella förhållanden. Utbildnings- och yrkesval kan förstås som uttryck för såväl reflexiva livsprojekt som subjektiva dynamiker. Att formas till civilingenjör och läkare ter sig på vitt skilda sätt. Ingenjörerna formas till generalister och ”spelar med säkra kort” medan läkarna bygger en karaktär och ”spelar med sig själva som insats”. I arbetet använder civilingenjörerna titeln som en flexibel strategi – identifikation är främst bunden till plats, funktion och arbetstid. Läkarnas identifikation med yrket utgör ett konstant tillstånd – läkare är något de alltid är, också på fritiden – yrket är starkt bundet till person. Resultaten indikerar att både ingenjörs- och läkaryrket kännetecknas av livslånga kvalificeringsprocesser. De visar sig stark exkluderande över tid. Relationen mellan högre utbildning och arbetet diskuteras vidare i avhandlingen genom människors levnadsbanor och i termer av såväl formbara som hållbara liv.The focus of this thesis is the formation of knowledge and professional identification through physicians’ and engineers’ education and work – life-trajectories are the frame of interpretation. The aim is to describe and interpret the relationship between higher education and work, partly by studying ideas in research and educational policy, partly by people’s subjectivity, experiences and everyday life. This study is based on text analysis and interviews with physicians and engineers. The characteristic of this study is that processes are described and interpreted through a longitudinal design. The theoretical framework is built up by three interrelated themes: knowledge and dynamics in contemporary society; higher education and work; the reflexivity of the individuals. An overarching interpretive approach is applied, and the concepts of flexibility, stability and ambivalence are used dialectically in the analysis of empirical data. The study indicates interplay between subjectivity, everyday life experiences and conditions in different practices. The informants’ educational and career choice can be understood as expressions of reflexive life-projects or as subjective dynamics. Becoming an engineer or physician stand out as substantially different processes. The engineers in information technology are becoming generalists and are “playing the game with a safe hand”, while the physicians becoming characters and are “playing the game with oneself as stake”. At work the engineers are using their title as a flexible strategy – identification is confined to place of work, occupation and working hours. The physicians’ identification with their profession is a fixed state of mind – they are always physicians, even in their leisure time – the profession is associated with their personality. The results indicate that both engineers and physicians careers can be characterised by life-long qualification. It appears as a strongly excluding factor. The relationship between higher education and work is discussed as life-trajectories and in terms of formable and sustainable life

AI in space: Past, present, and possible futures

While artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly present in recent space applications, new missions being planned will require even more incorporation of AI techniques. In this paper, we survey some of the progress made to date in implementing such programs, some current directions and issues, and speculate about the future of AI in space scenarios. We also provide examples of how thinkers from the realm of science fiction have envisioned AI's role in various aspects of space exploration

Multi-modal knowledge graph inference via media convergence and logic rule

Media convergence works by processing information from different modalities and applying them to different domains. It is difficult for the conventional knowledge graph to utilise multi-media features because the introduction of a large amount of information from other modalities reduces the effectiveness of representation learning and makes knowledge graph inference less effective. To address the issue, an inference method based on Media Convergence and Rule-guided Joint Inference model (MCRJI) has been proposed. The authors not only converge multi-media features of entities but also introduce logic rules to improve the accuracy and interpretability of link prediction. First, a multi-headed self-attention approach is used to obtain the attention of different media features of entities during semantic synthesis. Second, logic rules of different lengths are mined from knowledge graph to learn new entity representations. Finally, knowledge graph inference is performed based on representing entities that converge multi-media features. Numerous experimental results show that MCRJI outperforms other advanced baselines in using multi-media features and knowledge graph inference, demonstrating that MCRJI provides an excellent approach for knowledge graph inference with converged multi-media features