Human/machine Learning: Becoming Responsible for Learning Cultures of Digital Technologies

This paper centrally asks for the ways in which ubiquitous, ever new digital technologies of 'our' everyday lives transform learning at the digital human-machine interface from the perspective of feminist science and technology studies. How to account for emerging forms of interwoven human and machine learning? Suggesting the term of learning cultures in approaching this question, the paper emphasizes an understanding of learning not as a proficiency of an entity embodying either natural or artificial intelligence, but rather as a culturally situated and materially enacted process. In so doing, the paper brings together recent impulses that suggest a re-conceptualization of learning, e.g. through the notion of "machine learners" (Mackenzie 2017) or that of "posthuman learning (Hasse 2018)". Reading these insights together, I will finally suggest an account of becoming responsible for learning cultures of digital technologies through a reconsidered notion of interwoven human/machine learning

Robotic Knitting

As a reaction to typically dead-end debates on future human and robot collaboration that tend to be either dismissive or overly welcoming towards »cobot« technologies, this book provides a technofeminist intervention. Pat Treusch not only shows how both the fields of technofeminism and robotics can engage in a practical exchange through knitting, but also contributes a tangible example of coboting dynamics. Robotic Knitting re-negotiates the boundaries between formalisation and embodiment, craft and high-tech as well as useful and dysfunctional machines. It re-crafts the nature of collaboration between human and robot. This finally entails an alternative mode of relating - a mode that enables an account of careful coboting

Review of: Eva Sänger, Malaika Rödel (Hg.): Biopolitik und Geschlecht. Zur Regulierung des Lebendigen. Münster: Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot 2012.

Das Konzept der Biopolitik als Machtmechanik politischer Techniken des Regiert-Werdens und des Sich-Selbst-Regierens erscheint prädestiniert, um das gesellschaftliche Potential lebenswissenschaftlicher Innovationen und Möglichkeiten auszuloten. Dementsprechend wird in dem Band die Gouvernementalität von Biopolitiken aus geschlechtertheoretischer Perspektive entlang gesellschaftlich aktueller Themen, anhand derer sich biopolitische Machttechniken artikulieren, analysiert. Damit werden nicht nur zentrale gesellschaftliche Themen aufgegriffen, sondern ebenso die queere und feministische Theoriebildung konzeptuell bereichert.The concept of biopolitics as mechanics of power for political techniques of being governed and of governing oneself seems predestined for exploring the social potential of life scientific innovations and possibilities. Consequently, this volume analyzes the governmentality of biopolitics from a gendertheoretical perspective along current societal topics, which express biopolitical techniques of power. In doing so, it not only addresses central societal topics, but also conceptually enhances queer and feminist theorizing

Robotsällskap : En technovetenskaplig kulturstudie av skapandet av humanoida hushållsrobotar ur queerfeministiska och posthumana perspektiv

Specific machines furnish the contemporary socio-technical imaginary: ‘Robot companions’ that supposedly herald the age of robots, an age that is signified by the realization of robot technologies that are taking over labor from humans in every sphere of ‘everyday human lives’. How do we want these robot companions to work and look and how do we want to live with these machines?  This thesis explores the engineering of relating humans and machines in the specific context of contemporary robotics from a queer feminist technoscience perspective. The ways in which such engineering processes implement ‘human-likeness’ in realizing the figure of the robot companion are of special concern. At the heart of this study is one robot model: Armar, developed at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Participating in the local everyday practices of establishing the efficient robot-human interface in the kitchen laboratory, this study investigates the ways in which Armar is made domestic as a prospective care service provider and companion in the kitchen. This study applies a posthumanist frame of research to investigate the practices of making anthropomatic kitchen robots. It employs an understanding of this making in terms of ‘performing the kitchen’. This further entails querying the ways in which norms of ‘humanness’ are translated into the human-like robot as well as the idea of pre-figured embodied entities with individual properties that meet in the laboratory. Thus, this thesis maps the labors and reciprocities of learning to see and experience this specific robot model as a future human-like companion for humans by analyzing the apparatuses of bodily co-production between human and machine that are at work in the kitchen laboratory.Avhandlingen undersöker sociotekniska processer inom samtida robotik som både upprätthåller och skapar människa – maskin relationer ur ett feministiskt teknovetenskapligt perspektiv. Speciellt undersöks hur ingenjörer skapar robot-människa gränssnitt för hushållsrobotik och implementerar människolikhet i skapandet av framtidens robotsällskap. En specifik robotmodell, Armar, och dess utveckling följs vid Institutet för Antropomatik och Robotik, Tekniska Högskola i Karlsruhe i södra Tyskland. Armar ”bor” och verkar där i ett kökslaboratorium, en simulerad vardagsyta utvecklad för forskning och offentliga demonstrationer. Men hushållsrobotar har också en speciell plats i vår kulturella föreställningsvärld. I denna studie undersöks det sociotekniska och kulturella processen att domesticera robotar och ge dem status som prospektiva hjälpredor och sällskap i köket. Som en sådan kartläggning av ömsesidigt människa-maskin skapande teoretiserar studien den kroppsproducerande apparaten (Haraway 1991) som sätts i spel i detta kökslabb och i robot-människa gränssnittet. I studien utforskas ickemänsklig agens och posthumanistisk performativitet (Barad 2003) samt gränsdragningsarbetet mellan Jaget och Andra, människa och maskin, subject och objekt. Avhandlingen gör ett bidrag till förståelsen av kroppsliga normer och socio-materiella ömsesidigheter i skapandet av förmänskligat robotsällskap.Ob in Medienberichten oder Kinofilmen – aktuell prägen Maschinen das sozio-technische Imaginäre, die nach menschlichem Vorbild entwickelt werden, um in das ‘alltäglich-menschliche’ Leben einzutreten und dieses nachhaltig zu verändern. In ihrer Allgegenwärtigkeit künden sie das Zeitalter der Roboter an, das verspricht, den Lebensstandard, den sich der globale Norden zuschreibt, zu verbessern. Im Fokus dieser Studie steht ein spezifisches Robotermodell, Armar, das am Institut für Anthropomatik und Robotik des Instituts für Technologie in Karlsruhe (Deutschland) entwickelt wird. In der Analyse von Interviews, teilnehmender Beobachtung sowie Fotomaterial untersucht diese Studie die alltäglichen Praktiken im Robotik-Küchenlabor, durch die Armar zur Begleiter_in und Care-Arbeiter_in in der Küche wird. Die posthumanistische, queer-feministische Rahmung der Analyse erlaubt es, die Herstellung des anthropomatischen Küchenroboters als ein Performing the Kitchen zu verstehen. Die Arbeit fokussiert damit auf die Bedingungen und die Akteur_innen – sowohl menschliche als auch nichtmenschliche – und fragt nach den Normen des Menschlichen, die bei dem Arbeiten an einer ,menschenähnlichen‘ Maschine produziert, aber auch verändert werden. Dabei zeichnet sie nach, dass Entitäten mit verkörperten Eigenschaften nicht präexistieren, sondern aus komplexen Mensch-Maschine-Verhältnissen der Ko-Produktion hervorgehen

The Art of Failure in Robotics: Queering the (Un)Making of Success and Failure in the Companion Robot Laboratory

This article investigates an emerging class of contemporary machines: the robot companion. It is introduced as a robot that will accompany ‘us’ in ‘our’ human everyday lives. This article analyzes one example of how robot companionship is realized while querying how this realization might imply a change in how ‘we’ conceive of human/machine relations. Drawing on central insights into the making of the humanoid Armar, the author develops an approach to emerging human/machine relations through affects, more precisely through the affective strategies and affective labors taking place in the robotics laboratory. She furthermore suggests taking a posthumanist perspective on the analysis, which entails becoming attentive to the intra-active co-production between human and machine. Importantly, this also allows her to tweak the powerful differentiation between success and failure at work in this specific setting, the robotics laboratory. How can ‘we’ rethink human/machine relations of humanlike interaction through queering success and failure at the robot/human interface? Finally, the author suggests establishing an understanding of laboratory work on the project of the humanlike companion that takes into account the queering potential of failure – centrally by emphasizing the interweaving of knowing and affects, rather than neglecting their connection. At stake seems to be the possibility to develop visions of how to turn the capitalist endeavor of increasing rationalizations of ‘human everyday lives’ into a more responsible and accountable practice of technologization that takes into account the largely neglected dimensions of human/machine relations beyond the success/failure binary.  

Robotic Knitting: Re-Crafting Human-Robot Collaboration Through Careful Coboting

As a reaction to typically dead-end debates on future human and robot collaboration that tend to be either dismissive or overly welcoming towards "cobot" technologies, this book provides a technofeminist intervention. The author not only shows how both the fields of technofeminism and robotics can engage in a practical exchange through knitting, but also contributes a tangible example of coboting dynamics. Robotic Knitting re-negotiates the boundaries between formalisation and embodiment, craft and high-tech as well as useful and dysfunctional machines. It re-crafts the nature of collaboration between human and robot. This finally entails an alternative mode of relating - a mode that enables an account of careful coboting

Ethical assessment of a hospital disinfection robot

Robots have the potential to deliver very positive impacts for society, however, it's critical that in preparing for real-world deployments, we recognize and take steps to mitigate against the potential harms, both direct and indirect, that they may cause. In this paper, we explore how the ethics canvas (EC) and the ethical risk assessment (ERA) methodology defined in British Standard 8611 can be combined to better align robot technologies with ethics and their socio-cultural context of operation. We illustrate this through a practical case-study involving the real-world introduction of a disinfection robot to a radiology department in a European hospital. Using the EC, we identified 49 distinct ways that the technology was likely to impact key stakeholders and 11 ways that failure or misuse of the technology was likely to impact service provision. From this data, 8 mitigating measures were identified. Then, using the ERA tool, 9 risks were identified that were considered to represent a high likelihood of occurrence. From these insights, a further 8 mitigation measures were proposed. The combined use of both tools was found to be complementary, since the EC fostered a bottom-up, subjective critical thinking process whereas the ERA provided a broader, more top-down objective view. This example provides a practical template for robotics practitioners to better understand and manage the ethical and socio-cultural dimensions of their work, and contributes towards the standardization of ethical assessments in robotics with an emphasis on the move from principles to practice