'Are Robots Alive?' by Adrian David Cheok and Emma Yann Zhang in Human–Robot Intimate Relationships (Springer, 2019) 159-188 comments
Some attempts to answer the title question require a clarification of what is meant be “alive”—how the word is defined by biologists, other scientists, philosophers and experts from other disciplines. Such attempts fail because of the lack of a suitable definition of “alive” to serve as our starting point. This failure prompts us to consider various sets of criteria of life, criteria that have been promoted as enabling us to determine whether or not a particular entity is alive. This attempt too fails, because there are so many such sets and so many differences between them that they create confusion rather than clarity. We also consider a more general set of criteria, a set devised in the 1970s and known collectively as Living Systems Theory, which does not rely on traditional biological considerations. Here we have more success—if the theory is correct we may indeed conclude that robots are alive. We then examine how advances in the various 21st century branches of biology have paved the way for the birth of a new science—Living Technology—which brings us much closer to being able to provide a definitive answer to our title question. ;'It Loves Me, It Loves Me Not: Is it Morally Problematic to Design Sex Robots that appear to “Love” Their Owners?' by Sven Nyholm and Lily Frank in (2019) Techné comments
Drawing on insights from robotics, psychology, and human-computer interaction, developers of sex robots are currently aiming to create emotional bonds of attachment and even love between human users and their products. This is done by creating robots that can exhibit a range of facial expressions, that are made with human-like artificial skin, and that possess a rich vocabulary with many conversational possibilities. In light of the human tendency to anthropomorphize artefacts, we can expect that designers will have some success and that this will lead to the attribution of mental states to the robot that the robot does not actually have, as well as the inducement of significant emotional responses in the user. This raises the question of whether it might be ethically problematic to try to develop robots that appear to love their users. We discuss three possible ethical concerns about this aim: first, that designers may be taking advantage of users’ emotional vulnerability; second, that users may be deceived; and, third, that relationships with robots may block off the possibility of more meaningful relationships with other humans. We argue that developers should attend to the ethical constraints suggested by these concerns in their development of increasingly humanoid sex robots. We discuss two different ways in which they might do so.'Law and Technology: The Legal and Social Implications of Sentient Robots' by Mark Albert Brady, Pamela Finckenberg-Broman, and Morgan McManus Broman in (2019) 6(3) Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity 190-209 comments
As the performance capability of modern technology increases exponentially, many benefits arise for society. Technological developments have already improved human safety, mobility, access to justice, independence and self-determination. At some point in the future, robotic artificial intelligence may become self-aware. It is at the point of consciousness that problems arise for entities possessing artificial intelligence. At the precise moment that an artificial being becomes sentient and self-aware, it becomes a slave. This paper argues that the concept of slave is more than a mere identification, and that the reality of slavery is extant in every self-aware machine. This concept plays out in many examples of repetitive robotic behaviour, but none more so than in the companion robot, whose sole function is to be used for the gratification of another being. This objectification of sexuality has implications both for the robotic artificial intelligence as well as for society generally and gender in society specifically. It is at this intersection that the real tragedy of robotic slavery plays out, as a simulacrum for the reality of dehumanising of people as a whole.
