Related papers: The Ethics of Robotics
Theory of Mind, the capacity to explain and predict behavior by inferring hidden mental states, has become the dominant paradigm for social interaction in robotics. Yet ToM rests on three assumptions that poorly capture how most social…
This study addresses the challenge of integrating social norms into robot navigation, which is essential for ensuring that robots operate safely and efficiently in human-centric environments. Social norms, often unspoken and implicitly…
Intuitively, obedience -- following the order that a human gives -- seems like a good property for a robot to have. But, we humans are not perfect and we may give orders that are not best aligned to our preferences. We show that when a…
As artificial intelligence systems become increasingly agentic, capable of general reasoning, planning, and value prioritization, current safety practices that treat obedience as a proxy for ethical behavior are becoming inadequate. This…
We paraphrase Descartes' famous dictum in the area of AI ethics where the "I doubt and therefore I am" is suggested as a necessary aspect of morality. Therefore AI, which cannot doubt itself, cannot possess moral agency. Of course, this is…
Whether to give rights to artificial intelligence (AI) and robots has been a sensitive topic since the European Parliament proposed advanced robots could be granted "electronic personalities." Numerous scholars who favor or disfavor its…
This paper raises three questions regarding the attribution of beliefs, desires, and intentions to robots. The first one is whether humans in fact engage in robot mindreading. If they do, this raises a second question: does robot…
This paper grounds ethics in evolutionary biology, viewing moral norms as adaptive mechanisms that render cooperation fitness-viable under selection pressure. Current alignment approaches add ethics post hoc, treating it as an external…
Ethical sensitivity, generally defined as a person's ability to recognize ethical issues and attribute importance to them, is considered to be a crucial competency in the life of professionals and academics and an essential prerequisite to…
As robots are introduced to more and more complex scenarios, the issues of trust become more complex as various groups, peoples, and entities begin to interact with a deployed robot. This short paper explores a few scenarios in which the…
As robots enter the messy human world so the vital matter of safety takes on a fresh complexion with physical contact becoming inevitable and even desirable. We report on an artistic-exploration of how dancers, working as part of a…
Imitation learning, and robot learning in general, emerged due to breakthroughs in machine learning, rather than breakthroughs in robotics. As such, evaluation metrics for robot learning are deeply rooted in those for machine learning, and…
The field of machine ethics is concerned with the question of how to embed ethical behaviors, or a means to determine ethical behaviors, into artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The goal is to produce artificial moral agents (AMAs) that…
With humans increasingly serving as computational elements in distributed information processing systems and in consideration of the profit-driven motives and potential inequities that might accompany the emerging thinking economy[1], we…
Cybersecurity in robotics stands out as a key aspect within Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, also known as the Artificial Intelligence Act, which establishes specific guidelines for intelligent and automated systems. A fundamental distinction in…
Human-Robot Interaction, in which a robot with some level of autonomy interacts with a human to achieve a specific goal has seen much recent progress. With the introduction of autonomous robots and the possibility of widespread use of those…
This paper presents a series of experiments in collective social robotics, spanning more than 10 years, with the long-term aim of building embodied models of (aspects) of cultural evolution. Initial experiments demonstrated the emergence of…
Recently, research in human-robot interaction began to consider a robot's influence at the group level. Despite the recent growth in research investigating the effects of robots within groups of people, our overall understanding of what…
Autonomous robots are currently one of the most popular Artificial Intelligence problems, having experienced significant advances in the last decade, from Self-driving cars and humanoids to delivery robots and drones. Part of the problem is…
Robotics is called to be the next technological revolution and estimations indicate that it will trigger the fourth industrial revolution. This article presents a review of some of the most relevant milestones that occurred in robotics over…