IRIE International Review of Information Ethics ISSN 1614-1687 Vol. 6 (12/2006) Ethics in Robotics Editors Guest Editors Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro (Editor in Chief) Uni- Dr. Daniela Cerqui, Department of Cybernetics, versity of Applied Sciences, Stuttgart, Germany, The University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading Wolframstr. 32, D-70191 Stuttgart RG6 6AY, UK E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Prof. Dr. Thomas Hausmanninger University of Dr. Jutta Weber Centre for Interdisciplinary Stu- Augsburg, Germany, Universitätsstr. 10 , D-86135 dies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Geibelstr. 41, Augsburg, D-47057 Duisburg, Germany E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] augsburg.de Prof. Dr. Karsten Weber European University Dr. Karsten Weber European University Viadrina, Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder, Germany E-Mail: kwe- Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, PO Box 17 86, D-15207 [email protected] Frankfurt (Oder), E-Mail: [email protected] Dr. Felix Weil quiBiq.de, Stuttgart, Germany, Editorial Office Heßbrühlstr. 11, D-70565 Stuttgart Marcus Apel E-Mail: [email protected] Mail: Rotebühlstr. 145, D-70197 Stuttgart E-Mail: [email protected] www.i-r-i-e.net IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 6 (12/2006) Vol. 6 (12/2006) Content Editorial: On IRIE Vol. 6 ..........................................................................................................................................1 Ethics in Robotics: Gianmarco Veruggio, Fiorella Operto: Roboethics: a Bottom-up Interdisciplinary Discourse in the Field of Applied Ethics in Robotics .......................2 Peter M. Asaro: What Should We Want From a Robot Ethic? ...............................................................................................9 Alistair S. Duff: Neo-Rawlsian Co-ordinates: Notes on A Theory of Justice for the Information Age ...................................... 17 John P. Sullins: When Is a Robot a Moral Agent? .............................................................................................................. 23 Brian R. Duffy: Fundamental Issues in Social Robotics ..................................................................................................... 31 Barbara Becker: Social Robots – Emotional Agents: Some Remarks on Naturalizing Man-Machine Interaction........................ 37 Dante Marino and Guglielmo Tamburrini: Learning Robots and Human Responsibility ............................................................................................... 46 C. K. M. Crutzen: Invisibility and the Meaning of Ambient Intelligence .................................................................................. 52 Stefan Krebs: On the Anticipation of Ethical Conflicts between Humans and Robots in Japanese Mangas .......................... 63 Maren Krähling: In Between Companion and Cyborg: The Double Diffracted Being Elsewhere of a Robodog ......................... 69 Naho Kitano: ‗Rinri‘: An Incitement towards the Existence of Robots in Japanese Society ................................................ 78 Miguel Angel Perez Alvarez: Robotics and development of intellectual abilities in children ...................................................................... 84 Dirk Söffker und Jutta Weber: On Designing Machines and Technologies in the 21st Century. An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. ...................... 91 © by IRIE – all rights reserved www.i-r-i-e.net ISSN 1614-1687 IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 6 (12/2006) Editorial: On IRIE Vol. 6 The third level asks the question, why we live with robots. Our main values are embedded into all our technological devices. Therefore, the question is: which values are we trying to realize through them? This issue is a very special issue. What it makes so Artificial creatures are a mirror of shared cultural special is the fact that we faced some of the issues values. Humans redefine themselves in comparison dealt in it in the process of creating it: some contri- with robots. This redefinition of living organisms in butions sent in by Email were blocked by the spam technological terms has far-reaching implications. mail scanner. They were - of course wrongly - Long-term reflections need to be developed and tagged as ‗sexual discriminating‘ but no alert was plausible scenarios need to be anticipated. given by the system. Now: who was to be made responsible if we – in fact in an uncomplicated und So we gather innovative conceptions of ethics and constructive thus human way – would not have engaged technoscience studies in this issue, which fixed the problem in time and the authors would not develop their argumentation in socio-political and have been included in the issue? On which grounds historical contexts to improve applied ethics in did the software decide to block them and thus can general and especially ethics in the field of robotics. it be taken as a moral agent? And finally, is the The issue collects a broad variety of themes and phenomenon of spam forcing us to use such agents approaches concerning very diverse fields of robot- in our social communication on which we have to ics and software agents such as educational robotics rely in various ways? There we are amidst the (Perez), entertainment robotics (Krähling), military subject of our current issue: Ethics in Robotics. robotics (Asaro), humanoids (Duffy), virtual agents In fact, robotics has become a fast growing research (Becker), ambient intelligence (Crutzen) and others. field and prosperous economic market. Robotic Philosophical and socio-technical aspects of human- systems are expected to interact not only with machine interaction (Becker, Crutzen, Duffy, Mar- experts but also with various every day users like ino/Tamburinni, Söffker/Weber) as well as the children, sick, elderly or visitors in a museum etc.. effects of different historical and cultural back- Although robots are therefore progressively sur- grounds of robotics (Krebs, Kitano) are also ana- rounding us in our professional lives as well as in lysed. In the beginning an overview of the roboeth- our private sphere, we have only few reflections on ics is given, groundings for future roboethical ap- the ethical and societal issues concerned with it. In proaches are discussed and roadmaps are devel- order to cover all the issues, we called for reflection oped (Asaro, Sullins, Operto/Veruggio). In this issue, at three complementary levels. we also accepted besides the regular, peer reviewed monographic contributions a dialogue between an The first one – that is the most common – concerns engineer in control dynamics (Söffker) and a phi- how human beings live in a technological environ- losopher (Weber) allowing for an interdisciplinary ment. It mainly consists in asking questions about discourse on the problems of human-machine the consequences (the so-called „impact assess- interaction and the foundations of political and ment―), and the way we (as users) handle robots. democratic participation in technology development. Classical ethical issues discussed as well as public policy fall into this category. We want to thank the authors and guest editors for contributing to this interdisciplinary and relatively On the second level, the reflection is directed to- young field and apologize for the postponement of wards questions of man-machine interaction and this issue due to some significant delays in the technology design. Robots are not regarded as the process this time – you might agree that it was ready-made products of engineers but as contested worthwhile in the end. We hope the contributions devices and emerging technologies. Concepts, help to support the further development of ethics, theories and means used in robotics to model the philosophy of science and technology studies in the relation between user and machine (master-slave, field of robotics – and especially to co-construct and interacting partners, caregiver-infant, owner-pet, shape our future lives with robots and agents in an etc.) are discussed concerning their ethical, episte- open and responsible way. mological, and ontological consequences. In addi- tion, questions of funding politics, military interest, Yours, media representation, and the like are central as- Rafael Capurro, Thomas Hausmanninger, Karsten pects on this level of discussion. Weber and Felix Weil, the Editors © by IRIE – all rights reserved www.i-r-i-e.net 1 ISSN 1614-1687 IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 6 (12/2006) Gianmarco Veruggio, Fiorella Operto: Roboethics: a Bottom-up Interdisciplinary Discourse in the Field of Ap- plied Ethics in Robotics Abstract: This paper deals with the birth of Roboethics. Roboethics is the ethics inspiring the design, development and employment of Intelligent Machines. Roboethics shares many 'sensitive areas' with Computer Ethics, Informa- tion Ethics and Bioethics. It investigates the social and ethical problems due to the effects of the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions in the Humans/Machines interaction‘s domain. Urged by the responsibilities involved in their professions, an increasing number of roboticists from all over the world have started - in cross-cultural collaboration with scholars of Humanities – to thoroughly develop the Roboethics, the applied ethics that should inspire the design, manufacturing and use of robots. The result is the Roboethics Road- map. Agenda Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................3