Ethical Issues for Robotics and Autonomous Systems

ULP Law Review, 2021

SUMMARY From 19 February to 14 June 2020, the European Commission held a Public Consultation on several policy and regulatory proposals that are currently being considered in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This consultation was centered on two main documents presented by the Commission: the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence[1] and the “Report on the safety and liability implications of Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics”[2]. The consultation also included an online survey[3], where the central themes of those two documents were covered in a summarized way. In November 2020, the results of the consultation were presented, as well as the texts accepted for publication[4]. In order to participate in this pre-legislative process, a working group was created within the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the Lusófona University of Porto, which presented a contribution that was accepted and published by the European Commission[5]. The White Pa...

Social Robots Boundaries, Potential, Challenges, 2016

This chapter argues that the time has come for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics researchers to welcome the contributions to good product design that ethical review adds to the research and development process. The argument against AI and robotics ethics boards largely turns on a failure to appreciate the distinction between AI entities and intelligent agents as well as the difference between human moral agents vs. artificial moral agents (AMAs). AI and robotics applications have a number of applications that are already raising ethical concerns in areas as diverse as the home, the workplace, medical, military, and police work. Ethics boards of the more distant future will have the unenviable position of being one of the last locations where humans can significantly control these artificial entities. The chapter argues that AI and Robotics researchers seek some professional ethical guidance as they create some of the most potentially disruptive technologies in human history.

SpringerBriefs in Ethics

Briefs in Ethics envisions a series of short publications in areas such as business ethics, bioethics, science and engineering ethics, food and agricultural ethics, environmental ethics, human rights and the like. The intention is to present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications across a wide spectrum. Springer Briefs in Ethics are seen as complementing monographs and journal articles with compact volumes of 50 to 125 pages, covering a wide range of content from professional to academic. Typical topics might include: • Timely reports on state-of-the art analytical techniques • A bridge between new research results, as published in journal articles, and a contextual literature review • A snapshot of a hot or emerging topic • In-depth case studies or clinical examples • Presentations of core concepts that students must understand in order to make independent contributions More information about this series at

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 2011

By Fiorella Operto The meanings of ethical concepts and rules, in a given situation, should be clear and unambiguous. If they are not, one must undertake to clarify their meanings to the extent possible (..) New ethical judgments and cases should be assimilated, where possible, into the existing body of cases, rules, laws, policies, and practices. Terrell Ward Bynum on Norbert Wiener S ince 2003, the ethical, legal, and societal issues (ELS) in advanced robotics have attracted the increasing and lively interest of academic and professional circles. A similar, although more occasional, debate has also spread to the general public, stimulated either by the novel statements of researchers about recent advancement in robotics or by new and sensitive robotics applications. This increase of contributions and interest occurred hand in hand with the rapid development of research and applications in the service (personal) robot sector, marking the end of the robot segregation era [1]. Many are the current social motivations for a high demand for personal robots. On the economic side, the transitional conclusion of a bull cycle for 72 • IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE • MARCH 2011

Connection Science

This Connection Science special issue, published in two parts as volume 29/2 and 29/3, addresses ethical and societal issues in robotics. The background to the special issue was explained in the editorial in issue 29/2. Here, we briefly summarise that context and introduce the contributions included in the current issues. In 2010 the UK's Engineering and Physical Science and Arts and Humanities Research Councils (EPSRC and AHRC) organised a retreat to consider ethical issues in robotics to which they invited a pool of experts drawn from the worlds of technology, industry, the arts, law and social sciences. This meeting resulted in a set of ethical "Principles of Robotics" (henceforth "the Principles"), that were published online by the EPSRC (Boden et al., 2011), that aimed at "regulating robots in the real world", and were stated in the form of five "rules" and seven "high-level messages". The five rules were as follows:

ORBIT Journal

Policymakers struggle to assess the ethical, legal and human rights impacts of IT systems in research, industry, and at home. At the same time, research needs to be useful for industry, academia, and society to have impact on policy. Right now, three European projects: PANELFIT, SHERPA and SIENNA, are working together with stakeholders to improve ethical, human rights and legal frameworks for information and communication technologies (ICT), big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Stakeholder involvement is key, and the outputs will support the European Union’s vision of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), as a means to foster the design of inclusive research and innovation. Here, we provide a short introduction to the projects and outline plans for collaboration with the aim to maximiseour joint policy impact.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

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 subset 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. JOHN TASIOULAS 50 significant real-world presence when General Motors installed a robot, 'Unimate', in one of its plants to carry out manual tasks-such as welding and spraying-that were deemed too hazardous for human workers. 1 Today, robots are so commonplace in manufacturing that they are a major cause of unemployment in that sector. 2 But the use of robots in factories is only the beginning of a 'robot revolution'-itself part of wider developments powered by the science of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-that has had, or promises to have, transformative effects on all aspects of our lives. Robots are now being used, or being developed for use, in a vast array of settings. Driverless cars have already been invented and are expected to appear on our roads within a decade. These cars have the potential to reduce traffic accidents, which currently claim more than a million lives each year worldwide, by up to 90%, while also reducing pollution and traffic congestion (Bonnefon, Shariff, Rhawan 2006). Robots are also used to perform domestic chores, including vacuuming, ironing, and walking pets. In medicine and social care, robots surpass doctors in diagnosing certain forms of cancer or performing surgery, and they are used in therapy for children with autism or in the care of the elderly. Tutor robots already exist, as do social robots that provide companionship, or even sex. In the business world, AI figures heavily in the stock market, where computers make most decisions automatically, and in the insurance and mortgage industries. Even the recruitment of human workers is turning into a largely automated process, with many rejected job applications never being scrutinized by human eyes. AI-based technology, some of it robotic, also plays a role in the criminal justice system, assisting in policing and decisions on bail, sentencing, and parole. The development of autonomous weapons systems (AWSs), which select and attack military targets without human intervention, promises a new era in military defence. And this is just a sample of recent developments. In this article, I examine some of the key ethical questions posed by robots and AI (or RAIs, as I shall refer to them). The overall challenge, of course, is to harness the benefits of RAIs while responding adequately to the risks we incur in doing so. The need to balance benefit and risk is a recurrent one in the history of technological advance, but RAIs present it in a new and potentially sweeping form with largescale implications for how we live among others-in relation to work, care, education, play, friendship, love-and even regarding how we understand what it is to be a

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Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022

I-NERGY-Deliverable 2.2: AI-related Ethical Guidelines and Recommendations Deliverable 2.2: AI-related Ethical Guidelines and Recommendations I-NERGY-Deliverable 2.2: AI-related Ethical Guidelines and Recommendations Deliverable 2.2: AI-related Ethical Guidelines and Recommendations 2.1.3 Key principles on processing personal data Article 5 of GDPR describes the principles that processing of personal data should respect.

An Introduction to Ethics in Robotics and AI

The recent success of AI and robotics has massively increased the international awareness of and the interest in these topics as a factor of economic competitiveness. This concerns not only businesses, but also regional and national governments. There are many claims about the potential for AI to create new service and product innovation. Such claims include the benefits of AI for healthcare such as improved diagnosis or therapy; for transport due to improved efficiency; for energy based on more accurate predictions of energy consumption; or ease of computer use with more natural user interfaces as, for example, in the case of speech understanding, gesture and face recognition and automatic translation. In general, many smart or intelligent technologies have been considered a major driver of innovation (Lee and Trimi 2018; Makridakis 2017), and also an important source of knowledge for innovation (Fischer and Fröhlich 2013). As a result of these promises, there is today a plethora of regional, national, and even supranational strategies and policy papers that aim at maximising the benefits of AI for their citizens. Examples of national strategies range from Canada to Mexico, Japan or India. Regional strategies have been developed in Bavaria and in the Northern Baltic countries. Supranational AI strategies, or at least joint studies and papers are the subject of work in the OECD and the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In early 2019, a broad range of policy papers (Agrawal et al. 2019) and marketing studies from consulting companies have been published. Many of these make the case for the innovation potential and economic benefits of AI (Li et al. 2017; Seifert et al. 2018). Governments around the world have responded to the massive increase in AI applications, but also to an even greater number of predictions of future AI applications and their societal benefits. As early as 2017, the Canadian government published a pan-Canadian AI strategy. It was followed by developed countries traditionally interested in the creating information technology such as Japan, Singapore,