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Social Robots Deserve Our Respect, Says Bioethicist

If you have sex with an Android doll and then hit her across the room, are you an abuser? If you are in a bad mood and you lower your robotic pet down the stairs, are you an idiot? Either way, is the owner of the device to blame for the bad behavior?

The questions may sound insincere, but a bioethicist in the US asserts that they raise concerns that societies must address as humans increasingly rely on social robots for companionship and emotional support.

Nancy Gicker, a bioethicist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, authored a research paper recently published in the journal. AI and society. He poses a provocative question – “Can we fault robots?” – He argues that the answer is “yes”.

“I think we need to question the assumption that robots are just machines that serve us,” Gicker said. “Increasingly manufacturers are building social robots with shapes familiar to humans: soft, tactile, recognizable voices, responses that have some emotional intelligence.” “We design them this way so that humans can form connections. So we have to be similarly thoughtful and thoughtful in how we act towards social robots.”

Contemporary Western societies tend to view robots as tools, or even slaves, that work only to help achieve human ends, the article says. This view stems from the Abrahamic religions that taught humans that they are superior to the rest of creation, and from philosophies that espouse that technologies, no matter how complex, are simply tools to help humans perform tasks with better results.

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Jeker acknowledged that some robots fit that description, such as those that assembly line workers have used for decades and more recent inventions such as self-propelled household vacuums. These are simple tools for getting individual tasks done.

Jeker notes, however, that robots are increasingly helping to fill in the social voids of rapidly aging societies around the world.

“Basic social groups are getting smaller and people are more likely to be alone as they get older and there is a shortage of workforce that tends to these adults. I think skilled nursing facilities and long-term care facilities where they have introduced social services robots that can lead older people in exercises kinetics, reading stories, playing interactive games — and even offering emotional closeness.”

While he does not suggest that people give up or downplay human relationships, Gicker sees an opportunity for Western societies to expand their idea of ​​relationships that can positively affect human lives.

She referred to Shinto, a Japanese belief system founded on the idea that kami (spirits or deities) inhabit all things, including those considered inanimate by Westerners, such as robots.

“In Japan, they consider robots to be very valuable in their own right,” Jeker said. “But when Japanese manufacturers send robots to Western countries, they instead market them as ‘useful.’”

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Her analysis was also based on an environmental philosophy inspired by the reverence shown by the indigenous Nepalese Sherpa people towards the Himalayan mountain range and other features of nature.

“Think about how we relate to a majestic mountain or a bright starry sky,” Jecker said. “When we open ourselves up to thinking about a robot in a similar way, it can influence our behavior in a way that allows for positive human-to-human relationships.”

Android devices and pet bots may lack core traits like awareness and creativity, and they don’t have a special quality that commands more respect than humans. But Jecker posits that human relationships with social robots may be something of high value, and that in itself may justify treating robots with respect, as contributors to valuable relationships.

“If Western thought remains trapped in seeing social robots as nothing more than tools or slaves, we are doing ourselves a disservice, shutting out the adventure and the possibility of forming highly valued social relationships with them,” she said.

Source: apaclive

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