 |
| Formation | December 11, 2015 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Aimee Van Wynsberghe, Noel Sharkey |
| Purpose | Advocacy for ethical design and production of robots |
| Headquarters | The Hague, Netherlands |
| Website | responsiblerobotics |
The Foundation for Responsible Robotics (FRR) is a not for profit non-government organization that advocates for the ethical design and production of robots. [1]
The FRR was officially launched on December 11, 2015, with the co-founders holding a press conference at the London-based Science Media Centre. [2] The foundation was originally created as a response to automation taking over human jobs, even in situations in which it isn't fully capable of carrying out the task at hand. Both co-founders stressed the need for "accountability and responsibility" in the laws and policy related to the design and production of robots. [3]
Since the foundation's launch, they have held multiple workshops addressing the increasing role of robots across multiple industries, along with potential solutions to ethical issues that may arise. Alongside this, they have launched a number of consultation reports addressing ethical scenarios in the field of robotics. [4]
A chief principle of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics is the adherence to "responsible robotics", a philosophy that consists of the following principles: [1]
A major part of the FRR's activities consists of producing consultation reports for both the general public and policy makers, consisting of an impartial analysis of certain topics within the field of robotics.
The foundation's first consultation report, Our Sexual Future with Robots, was released July 5th, 2017. The report consists of an overview of the current attributes and societal role of sex robots at the time of writing, and then poses a number of questions consisting of how robots would impact the sex industry and human perception of sexuality, all answered by scholars familiar with the topic at hand. The consultation report was later used by US Senator Dan Donovan, playing a role in his creation of HR 3665: CREEPER Act of 2017, a bill proposed that would prevent the distribution of child sex dolls within the United States. [5] [6]
Their second consultation report released by the foundation was Drones in the Service of Society. Officially presented on June 8, 2018, at The Hague's Peace Palace, this report outlines the multiple uses for drones in a humanitarian context, including disaster relief and environmental protection. The report also highlights the implications of humanitarian drone use on marginalized communities, such as refugees and anti-corruption activists. [7]
The foundation is also committed to holding workshops on a number of topics within the field of robotics, addressing ethical issues that may arise while drafting potential solutions to these problems. Previous workshop topics include the current and future impact of robots on the healthcare sector, as well as a workshop dedicated to uniting participants from multiple disciplines to formulate a concrete definition of responsible robotics. [8]
The Board of Directors is composed of the following:
In addition to the Board of Directors, the foundation is also joined by over twenty scholars directly related to the topic of responsible robotics, serving as the Executive Board of the foundation. [12]
Laws of robotics are any set of laws, rules, or principles, which are intended as a fundamental framework to underpin the behavior of robots designed to have a degree of autonomy. Robots of this degree of complexity do not yet exist, but they have been widely anticipated in science fiction, films and are a topic of active research and development in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.
Noel Sharkey is a computer scientist born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is best known to the British public for his appearances on television as an expert on robotics; including the BBC Two television series Robot Wars and Techno Games, and co-hosting Bright Sparks for BBC Northern Ireland. He is emeritus professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield.
Techfest is the annual science and technology festival of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, consisting of social initiatives and outreach programs throughout the year.
Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems to assist the operator of a vehicle. These features and the vehicles employing them may be labeled as intelligent or smart. A vehicle using automation for difficult tasks, especially navigation, to ease but not entirely replace human input, may be referred to as semi-autonomous, whereas a vehicle relying solely on automation is called robotic or autonomous.
Robot ethics, sometimes known as "roboethics", concerns ethical problems that occur with robots, such as whether robots pose a threat to humans in the long or short run, whether some uses of robots are problematic, and how robots should be designed such that they act 'ethically'. Alternatively, roboethics refers specifically to the ethics of human behavior towards robots, as robots become increasingly advanced. Robot ethics is a sub-field of ethics of technology, specifically information technology, and it has close links to legal as well as socio-economic concerns. Researchers from diverse areas are beginning to tackle ethical questions about creating robotic technology and implementing it in societies, in a way that will still ensure the safety of the human race.
Socially responsible investing (SRI), social investment, sustainable socially conscious, "green" or ethical investing, is any investment strategy which seeks to consider both financial return and social/environmental good to bring about social change regarded as positive by proponents. Socially responsible investments often constitute a small percentage of total funds invested by corporations and are riddled with obstacles.
The ethics of artificial intelligence is the branch of the ethics of technology specific to artificially intelligent systems. It is sometimes divided into a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, make, use and treat artificially intelligent systems, and a concern with the behavior of machines, in machine ethics. It also includes the issue of a possible singularity due to superintelligent AI.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is a UK-based independent charitable body, which examines and reports on bioethical issues raised by new advances in biological and medical research. Established in 1991, the Council is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The Council has been described by the media as a 'leading ethics watchdog', which 'never shrinks from the unthinkable'.
Sex robots or sexbots are anthropomorphic robotic sex dolls that have a humanoid form, human-like movement or behavior, and some degree of artificial intelligence. As of 2018, although elaborately instrumented sex dolls have been created by a number of inventors, no fully animated sex robots yet exist. Simple devices have been created which can speak, make facial expressions, or respond to touch.
Value sensitive design (VSD) is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner. VSD originated within the field of information systems design and human-computer interaction to address design issues within the fields by emphasizing the ethical values of direct and indirect stakeholders. It was developed by Batya Friedman and Peter Kahn at the University of Washington starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Later, in 2019, Batya Friedman and David Hendry wrote a book on this topic called "Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination". Value Sensitive Design takes human values into account in a well-defined matter throughout the whole process. Designs are developed using an investigation consisting of three phases: conceptual, empirical and technological. These investigations are intended to be iterative, allowing the designer to modify the design continuously.
The European Citizens' Consultations were a series of public consultations with citizens from the 28 member states of the European Union about the future of Europe. Between October 2006 and May 2007, more than 1,800 citizens in 27 countries were consulted in 23 languages, selected at random by professional recruitment agencies or universities according to a set of criteria designed to ensure that the participants were representative of the EU population. In European- and national-level debates the citizens chose and discussed three topics they considered most important to their lives, identified common ground and made recommendations to policy-makers responsible for decisions on Europe's future.
Lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) are a type of autonomous military system that can independently search for and engage targets based on programmed constraints and descriptions. LAWs are also known as lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), autonomous weapon systems (AWS), robotic weapons or killer robots. LAWs may operate in the air, on land, on water, underwater, or in space. The autonomy of current systems as of 2018 was restricted in the sense that a human gives the final command to attack—though there are exceptions with certain "defensive" systems.
Drone journalism is the use of drones, or unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), for journalistic purposes. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, "an unmanned aircraft is a device that is used, or is intended to be used, for flight in the air with no onboard pilot".
SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd. or Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies Ltd. or DJI is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, backed by several state-owned entities. DJI manufactures commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for aerial photography and videography. It also designs and manufactures camera systems, gimbal stabilizers, propulsion systems, enterprise software, aerial agriculture equipment, and flight control systems.
Cloud robotics is a field of robotics that attempts to invoke cloud technologies such as cloud computing, cloud storage, and other Internet technologies centered on the benefits of converged infrastructure and shared services for robotics. When connected to the cloud, robots can benefit from the powerful computation, storage, and communication resources of modern data center in the cloud, which can process and share information from various robots or agent. Humans can also delegate tasks to robots remotely through networks. Cloud computing technologies enable robot systems to be endowed with powerful capability whilst reducing costs through cloud technologies. Thus, it is possible to build lightweight, low-cost, smarter robots with an intelligent "brain" in the cloud. The "brain" consists of data center, knowledge base, task planners, deep learning, information processing, environment models, communication support, etc.
Jani Hirvinen is one of the early Finnish IT-technology pioneers. Hirvinen is also one of the first ones developing small private sector professional level UAVs. He is among the top developers of the ArduCopter platform that - together with the included autopilot - changed the way drones are being flown all over the world. He is also the co-founder of famous international unmanned institutions ArduPilot, DIYDrones and DroneCode.
Mark Coeckelbergh is a Belgian philosopher of technology. He is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna and former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. He was previously Professor of Technology and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, Managing Director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology, and a member of the Philosophy Department of the University of Twente. Before moving to Austria, he has lived and worked in Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands. He is the author of several books, including Growing Moral Relations (2012), Human Being @ Risk (2013), Environmental Skill (2015), Money Machines (2015), New Romantic Cyborgs (2017), Moved by Machines (2019), the textbook Introduction to Philosophy of Technology (2019), and AI Ethics (2020). He has written many articles and is an expert in ethics of artificial intelligence. He is best known for his work in philosophy of technology and ethics of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), he has also published in the areas of moral philosophy and environmental philosophy.
Shannon Vallor is a philosopher of technology. She is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She was at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California where she was the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor of Philosophy at SCU.
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Aimee van Wynsberghe is an AI ethicist at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany. She is also the president and co-founder of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, a not-for-profit NGO that advocates for the ethical design and production of robots.