Glenda Shaw-Garlock
School of Communication, Simon Fraser Univers
ity, Canada
The design of gendered sociable robots is the focus of this work. Drawing on a Communication Studies perspective, culturally diverse affective sociable robotics projects that are inflected with feminine social codes, sometimes in function or form are analyzed. Communication studies, an interdisciplinary approach, shapes my inquiry of this topic through careful attendance to the social shaping dimensions of technology and asks the questions: what do these technologies do to us and how might they change social relationships?
The process of ascribing gender to robots makes evident that "gender belongs both to the order of the material body and to the social and discursive or semiotic systems within which bodies are embedded" (Wajcman, 2004). This work considers the ways in which gender becomes embedded within certain technological objects, such as sociable technologies, that are intended for use or within contexts historically understood as feminine (e.g. cleaning, service, companion -bots such as iRobot's Roomba, Weizenbaum's Eliza, and iPhone's Siri), as well as those projects that intentionally create robotic bodies in the literal image of woman (e.g. EMA or Eternal, Maiden, Actualization, Sega's first-generation robotic girlfriend; Repliee, a female android created in the image of a Japanese media celebrity).
About the author: Glenda Shaw-Garlock
John Carter McKnight
Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
Questions of emotional and sexual intimacy with robots are often framed around images of the feminine submissive. However, the history of technology as replacement for labor, including sexual labor, and sexual practices in computer-mediated environments, suggests that BDSM, involving psycho-sexual submission mediated by software, is both more likely and less ethically fraught. BDSM relies on the consensual and negotiated transfer of agency from the submissive: such transfer to an object is possible in theoretical, ethical and engineering terms. Dominant robots implicate broad ethical and practical challenges in the development of autonomous robotic systems, but in a more narrow and approachable manner than, for example, those associated with lethal autonomous weapons. Such “Dombots” also offer a range of social and sexual therapeutic advantages, and development of such systems should be pursued.
About the author: John Carter McKnight
Matthew Gladden
Georgetown University, USA
A number of scholars have explored the possibility of human trust in robots. In this paper, I build on this research to consider a more specific sort of trust relationship: that of a human follower’s obedience to a robot who leads through the exercise of referent power and Weber’s ‘charismatic authority.’ Such a robot would lead human beings not by virtue of possessing superior knowledge or legal authority, but by inspiring human followers through the robot’s possession of personal sanctity, charisma, and moral attractiveness. This case is noteworthy because it might at first glance seem to represent the most difficult, least effective, and least likely way for robots to exercise influence over human beings. However, I argue that it is not only possible but will most likely happen rather naturally. By analyzing current robotic engineering efforts and selected fictional depictions of robots, I suggest three ways in which human beings are striving to create for ourselves charismatic robot leaders to whom we can relinquish some aspect of our decision-making responsibility. I also consider the specific ways in which robot leaders will acquire human trust: building on Coeckelbergh, I argue against the contractarian-individualist approach which presumes that human beings will be able to ‘choose’ our robot leaders, and instead propose a phenomenological-social understanding of the manner in which robot leaders will emerge naturally from within our society’s social fabric, without a conscious, rational decision on the part of human beings. Finally, drawing on Abrams and Rorty, I suggest that the long-term stability of these leader-follower relations will hinge on a fundamental question of robotic intelligence and motivation that stands as yet unresolved.
About the author: Matthew Gladden
Marco Nørskov
Department for Culture and Society, PENSOR group, Aarhus University
The ethical debate on robots has become a cutting edge issue in many countries. It is, however, most often approached through an us-versus-them perspective—as if we were watching a soccer game and taking one side. Informed by Eastern as well as Western thought, the aim of this article is to identify various problematic effects of this standard approach by questioning the central premise that it is based on, namely, the essential distinction between human beings and robots. In addition, by including Heidegger’s warnings against the danger that accompanies modern technology, this paper discusses the possibility that human-robot interaction even could evolve the participating human and facilitate its self-development positively.
About the author: Marco Nørskov
