Themes

In recent years, privacy has become more engaged with the development of robotics. For example, outdoor robots like drones, or surveillance robots, can monitor pedestrians; robots with artificial intelligence can monitor userdata and personalize commercials. These robots can invade human’s privacy. Thus protecting privacy is a significant topic when designing robots. When it comes to a robot interacting with humans, we need to think about whether the robot’s behavior might potentially violate privacy before applying it to our society. We should have the ability to restrict data processing, and ensure the collected information can be easily erased from the system.

Governments play a crucial role in ensuring human rights, preventing robots from physically hurting humans and other potential issues. The government should establish a sound law and regulate not just robot companies but also individual robot owners. In addition,  the domain of military robots is mainly shaped by the interests of governments although this might change if advanced military technologies become available to non-government actors. In order to prevent major conflicts in the future, all governments should endorse an international treaty regarding the control of lethal uses of robots.

The accountability of robotics can be divided into three essential stages across the lifecycle of robots: design (pre-deployment), monitoring (during deployment), and redress (after harm has occurred). It can be challenging to decide whether the harm is caused by terrible robot design (robot companies), misuse of robots (users), or both. Creating proper accountability protocols and procedures is an indispensable topic within the development of robotics, as it could efficiently teach people their responsibility.

In any case where a robot might directly or indirectly be in contact with humans, it is important that it treats all equally. This may seem like something that would be ‘natural’ for something that is not programmed to have any inherent predisposition to different groups of people, yet this is not always the case. Functions that a robot relies on, such as facial detection, or algorithms for decision making, can have inherent biases, either intentional or unintentional. These biases may be the result of poor data sets or algorithm training, or just bias on behalf of the programmers of these functions. It is important to catch and correct these errors, so that robots are ensured to be equitable in their interactions with humans.

Human Control of Technology is a significant topic with three main principles: human review of automated decision, ability to opt out of automated decision, and other general issues in human control of technology. Guaranteeing human involvement and human control in automated decision is one of the basic principles in the application of robotics, as it ensures potential ethical issues within human control. When interacting with robots, humans should have the right to review automated decisions, and individuals’ choices should not be subject to the robotic system.

In order for progress to be made in any field, leading specialists conduct research in the interest of the general public. It is these professionals’ responsibility to guide these investigations with caution and awareness of the implications and effects of the knowledge they pursue. More so, professionals stand as the translators of their findings to the public to explain the uses, possibilities, and dangers of their findings. By conducting research and educating others, leading specialists grow their field and keep an informed public as to how their findings will affect their lives.

Sense of identity is something that can be challenged by robots, particularly when robots are capable of doing more and more ‘human’ things. Identity can be discussed by either how robotics affects the identity of individuals or groups, as in how they see themselves and how that has changed due to robotics. One such example is the displacement of workers due to automation. If workers’ sense of identity is, in some ways, linked to their job, automation might have a negative impact on their identity. On a larger scale, the identity of humans as a whole might eventually be affected with the development of robots.

With robotic technology becoming further integrated into our lives, people interact with an increasing number of data collecting devices on a daily basis. Despite efforts to make technology secure, every technology faces the risk of cyberattacks. A cyberattack in the form of a data breach can risk the privacy of citizens and often results in identity theft. Robots can also be hacked and this might give the attacker full or partial control of the robot. This can be a risk to safety if the attacker uses the robot to perform harmful acts. For example, if hacked, an autonomous vehicle could crash, a surgical robot could malfunction during surgery, and a military robot could become deadly in an unintended way. It is crucial to have plans for preventing, detecting, and responding to cyber attacks for any technology.

As advances are made in various fields, the public have influence on the fields they choose to focus on, as the public interest tends to lead the direction of technology development. Social media has made it easier than ever for individual people to voice and discuss their perspectives on any given topic. Since people can get their own voice out so easily, the public can easily encourage or restrict topics of research. This can be done through events, petitions, protests, and fundraisers. The ultimate goal of technology, or specifically, robotics, should be promoting human values, which can be divided into three principles: human flourishing, access to technology, and leveraged to benefit society.

It is important for companies to maintain the explainability of their technologies and to be transparent with the public. Explainability refers to the ability to provide reasons for how and why a technology works a specific way. This is a critical aspect of holding people or “moral agents” responsible for a technology’s impact on individuals and the environment. Transparency builds on explainability as part of a process of disclosing information about the technology to users. Information about what personal data the technology is collecting on users and how this data is being used should be disclosed. This is crucial for obtaining informed consent and allowing users to evaluate the ethics of a company’s practices. Transparency must also balance information privacy; a company should not disclose information that violates users’ right to privacy.

Anthropomorphization is the application of human-like qualities to something that is not human, such as describing an object as ‘breathing’ even though it cannot. Robots that interact with humans do things that people do, or traits that people like can often be subjected to anthropomorphization. Giving a robot a name is one such example, as many bomb disposal robots in military use have individual names and are sometimes even given funerals when they are ‘retired’. Anthropomorphization may change how people view robots, or how people view other humans. As such, it is important to consider when a robot should be anthropomorphized, and when it shouldn’t. This can be dependent on the domains for the robot, such as anthropomorphized for companion robots, and non anthropomorphized for industrial robots.