Arto Laitinen, University of Tampere, FI

In this presentation we will present an overview of various philosophical questions related to responsibility and robotics. The first question we address is: What is responsibility? In so doing we also address the following relted questions: What are its most important sub-classes (forward-looking, backward-looking; moral, legal; accountability, liability); and why do standard requirements of responsibility suggest that robots are not parties fit to be held responsible? For this discussion, a natural point of departure is to think of the conditions of moral or legal responsibility and see whether robots do or can satisfy such conditions. Here relevant questions include the following: Are robots agents and if so, what kind of agents are they? How should we compare human and robot agency? Do robots have self-control? What do we mean by autonomous robots?

The second question we will address concerns what to think about ‘responsibility gaps’. It seems apparent that with technological progress, and various other areas of social life, we face phenomena, even wide-spread ones, for who no-one seems to be (taken to be, held) responsible. What will such gaps look like in the realm of service and social robots and how can we begin to address the bridging of said gaps?

Finally, the third question we wish to address focuses on responsibility as applied to robotics. In particular we want to discuss responsible ways to deal with robots, e.g. what kinds of tasks should let robots do, what kinds of roles should we delegate to robots? How do we impose limits on designers without stifling innovation?