How Models Fail. A Critical Look at the History of Computer Simulations of the Evolution of Cooperation

Simulation models of the Reiterated Prisoner's Dilemma have been popular for studying the evolution of cooperation since more than 30 years now. However, there have been practically no successful instances of empirical application of any of these models. At the same time this lack of empirical testing and confirmation has almost entirely been ignored by the modelers community. In this paper, I examine some of the typical narratives and standard arguments with which these models are justified by their authors despite the lack of empirical validation. I find that most of the narratives and arguments are not at all compelling. None the less they seem to serve an important function in keeping the simulation business running despite its empirical shortcomings

A Softwaremodule for an Ethical Elder Care Robot. Design and Implementation

The development of increasingly intelligent and autonomous technologies will eventually lead to these systems having to face morally problematic situations. This is particularly true of artificial systems that are used in geriatric care environments. The goal of this article is to describe how one can approach the design of an elder care robot which is capable of moral decision-making and moral learning. A conceptual design for the development of such a system is provided and the steps that are necessary to implement it are described

Empathy and Dyspathy with Androids: Philosophical, Fictional, and (Neuro)Psychological Perspectives

The fact that we develop feelings towards androids, i.e., objects with a humanlike appearance, has fascinated people since ancient times. However, as a short survey of the topic in history, science fiction literature and film shows, our emotional reactions towards them are ambivalent. On the one hand, we can develop feelings of empathy almost as we do with real human beings; on the other hand, we feel repulsion or dyspathy when those creatures show a very high degree of human likeness. Recently, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term “uncanny valley” to refer to this effect. The aim of this essay is, first, to give an explanation as to why we feel empathy towards androids although we know that they do not have feelings themselves. This presupposes a perception-based concept of empathy which is going to be developed on the basis of some of Theodor Lipps’ ideas. The second question to be answered is why empathy with androids turns into dyspathy when they become very humanlike. As I will argue, this is due to a particular kind of interference between perception and the imagination when confronted with very humanlike objects. This makes androids quite special objects right at the divide between humans and non-humans. They are non-human, but we feel ill at ease when treating them as mere objects

Embodied cooperative systems: From tool to partnership

Wachsmuth I. Embodied cooperative systems: From tool to partnership. In: Misselhorn C, ed. Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Philosophical Studies Series. Vol 122. Cham: Springer International Publishing Switzerland; 2015: 63-79.Understanding others’ intentions and representing them as being able to understand intentions are relevant factors in cooperation, as is the ability to represent shared goals and coordinated action plans (joint intentions). To endow artificial systems with cooperative functionality, they need to be enabled to adopt the goals of another individual and act together with the other to achieve these goals. Such systems may be embodied as robotic agents or as humanoid agents projected in virtual reality (“embodied cooperative systems”). A central question is how the processes involved interact and how their interplay can be modeled. For example, inter-agent cooperation relies very much on common ground, i.e. the mutually shared knowledge of the interlocutors. Nonverbal behaviors such as gaze and gestures are important means of coordinating attention between interlocutors (joint attention) in the pursuit of goals. In the context of cooperative settings, the view that humans are users of a certain “tool” has shifted to that of a “partnership” with artificial agents, insofar they can be considered as being able to take initiative as autonomous entities. This chapter will outline these ideas taking the virtual humanoid agent “Max” as an example

CRETA (Centrum fürreflektierte Textanalyse)– FachübergreifendeMethodenentwicklung in denDigital Humanities

This paper will present the concept of the newly established Stuttgart DH Center CRETA, which unites very different text-oriented disciplines such as literature, linguistics, history, political science, and philosophy, and which, on the other hand, not only applies methods and modeling techniques from machine learning, computational linguistics, and computer graphic visualization, but has begun to integrate them into a common DH methodology of deep reflective text analysis. Such a further development of the method inventory of the Digital Humanities is a long way and needs many participants. However, we can already illustrate aspects of the conception with case studies of scenarios from ongoing digital humanities projects, and it seems important to us to put the approach up for broad discussion