The topic of ethics of robots attracts extended interest on our Summit.
Renowned critic of Artificial Intelligence, Hubert Dreyfus, published in 1972 the book “What computers can’t do”, followed up in 1992 by the book “What computers still can’t do”.
At the Summit, Tom Ziemke from the University of Skövde in Sweden will paraphrase those titles. His talk will rather focus on “What robots can’t do either”. Notwithstanding, Ziemke is convinced that there is much that robots can really do (even more than computers). So he works as co-ordinator in an EU-funded research project on robot-assisted therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders, with the acronym DREAM.
“Probo”, a robot they develop (DREAM)
Peter Purgathofer from the Vienna University of Technology – working on the interplay of design and (software) development in the Human-Computer Interaction Group – is concerned about dreams engineers might have concerning AI in contradistinction to nightmares movie audiences are concerned with. He will give another talk to lay bridges between different communities and elaborate on hard-to-see problems in social robots.
And Rafael Capurro (already introduced here) is the third to take the floor.
These three talks will be complemented by a podium discussion. Moderator will be Marco Ragni from the Center for Cognitive Science at the Institute of Computer Science and Social Research, University of Freiburg. Ragni has a venia in computer science.
Among additional participants in the round table are Søren Brier from the Copenhagen Business School, Editor-in-Chief of Cybernetics and Human Knowing, and Martin Rhonheimer, who started his academic career as assistant of Hermann Lübbe at Zurich and is currently Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce in Rome.
Thanks goes to Katholische Hochschulgemeinde that co-sponsors that event as well as the Capurro-Fiek Foundation.
People involved in this Stream may be interested in the following link:
PENSOR – Philosophical and Transdisciplinary Enquiries into Social Robotics – has been established as a new, explicitly transdisciplinary research platform at Aarhus University. Social Robotics itself is defined as a transdisciplinary research area at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science, psychology, anthropology and philosophy.
http://projects.au.dk/pensor/
My friend and mentor Johanna Seibt, Professor of Philosophy at Aarhus and one of the leaders of this initiative has mentioned to me the following Conference, Robo-Philosophy 2014–Sociable Robots and the Future of Social Relations, which took take place in Aarhus August 20-23, 2014 and will be followed by others.
http://www.robo-philosophy.org
Best wishes.