Robotic governance

Last updated

Robotic governance provides a regulatory framework to deal with autonomous and intelligent machines. [1] [2] [3] This includes research and development activities as well as handling of these machines. The idea is related to the concepts of corporate governance, technology governance [4] and IT-governance, which provide a framework for the management of organizations or the focus of a global IT infrastructure.

Contents

Robotic governance describes the impact of robotics, automation technology and artificial intelligence on society from a holistic, global perspective, considers implications and provides recommendations for actions in a Robot Manifesto. This is realized by the Robotic Governance Foundation, an international non-profit organization. [5]

The robotic governance approach is based on the German research on discourse ethics. Therefore, the discussion should involve all Stakeholders, including scientists, society, religion, politics, industry as well as labor unions in order to reach a consensus on how to shape the future of robotics and artificial intelligence. The compiled framework, the so-called Robot Manifesto, will provide voluntary guidelines for a self-regulation in the fields of research, development as well as use and sale of autonomous and intelligent systems.

The concept does not only appeal on the responsibility of researchers and robot manufacturers, but like with child labor and sustainability, also means a raising of opportunity costs. The greater public awareness and pressure will become concerning this topic, the harder it will get for companies to conceal or justify violations. Therefore, from a certain point it will be cheaper for organizations to invest in sustainable technologies and accepted.

History of the concept

The idea to set ethical standards for intelligent machines is not a new one and undoubtedly has its roots in science fiction literature. Even older is the discussion about ethics of intelligent, man-made creatures in general. Some of the earliest recorded examples can be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses , in Pygmalion, in the Jewish golem mysticism (12th century) as well as in the idea of Homunkulus (Latin: little man) arisen from the alchemy of the Late Middle Ages.

The fundamental and philosophical question of these literary works is what will happen, if humans presume to create autonomous, conscious or even godlike creatures, machines, robots or androids. While most of the older works broach the issue of the act of creation, if it is morally appropriate and which dangers could arise, Isaac Asimov was the first to realize the necessity to restrict and regulate the freedom of action of machines. He wrote the first Three Laws of Robotics.

At least since the use of drones equipped with air-to-ground missiles in 1995 that can be used against ground targets, like e.g., the General Atomics MQ-1, and the resulting collateral damage, the discussion on the international regulation of remote controlled, programmable and autonomous machines attracted public attention. Nowadays, this discussion covers the entire range of programmable, intelligent and/or autonomous machines, drones as well as automation technology combined with Big Data and artificial intelligence. Lately, well-known visionaries like Stephen Hawking, [6] [7] Elon Musk [8] [9] [10] and Bill Gates [11] [12] brought the topic to the focus of public attention and awareness. Due to the increasing availability of small and cheap systems for public service as well as commercial and private use, the regulation of robotics in all social dimensions gained a new significance. 

Scientific recognition

Robotic governance was first mentioned in the scientific community within a dissertation project at the Technical University of Munich, supervised by Professor Dr. emeritus Klaus Mainzer. The topic has been the subject of several scientific workshops, symposia and conferences ever since, including the Sensor Technologies & the Human Experience 2015, the Robotic Governance Panel at the We Robots 2015 Conference, a keynote at the 10th IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO), a full day workshop on Autonomous Technologies and their Societal Impact as part of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Prognostics and Health Management (PHM’16), a keynote at the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Autonomic Computing (ICCAC), the FAS*W 2016: IEEE 1st International Workshops on Foundations and Applications of Self* Systems, the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Innovative Business Practices for the Transformation of Societies (IEEE EmergiTech 2016) and the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC 2016).

Since 2015 IEEE even holds an own forum on robotic governance at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IEEE IROS): the first and second "Annual IEEE IROS Futurist Forum", which brought together worldwide renowned experts from a wide range of specialities to discuss the future of robotics and the need for regulation in 2015 and 2016. In 2016 Robotic governance has also been the topic of a plenary keynote presentation on the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016) in Daejeon, South Korea.

Several video statements and interviews on robotic governance, responsible use of robotics, automation technology and artificial intelligence as well as self-regulation in a world of Robotic Natives, with internationally recognized experts from research, economy and politics are published on the website of the Robotic Governance Foundation. Max Levchin, co-founder and former CTO of PayPal emphasized the need for robotic governance in the course of his Q&A session on the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) 2016 in Austin and referred to the comments of his friend and colleague Elon Musk on this subject. Gerd Hirzinger, former head of the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center, showed during his keynote speech at the IROS Futurist Forum 2015 the possibility of machines being so intelligent that it would be inevitable, one day, to prevent certain behavior. At the same event, Oussama Khatib, American roboticist and director of the Stanford robotics lab, advocated to emphasize the user acceptance when producing intelligent and autonomous machines. Bernd Liepert, president of the euRobotics aisbl – the most important robotics community in Europe – recommended to establish robotic governance worldwide and underlined his wish for Europe taking the lead in this discussion, during his plenary keynote at the IEEE IROS 2015 in Hamburg. Hiroshi Ishiguro, inventor of the Geminoid and head of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at the University of Osaka, showed during the RoboBusiness Conference 2016 in Odense that it is impossible to stop technical progress. Therefore, it is necessary to accept the responsibility and to think about regulation. In the course of the same conference, Henrik I. Christensen, author of the U.S. Robotic Roadmap, underlined the importance of ethical and moral values in robotics and the suitability of robotic governance to create a regulatory framework.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dario Floreano</span> Swiss-Italian roboticist and engineer

Dario Floreano is a Swiss-Italian roboticist and engineer. He is Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent System (LIS) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and was the founding director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swarm robotics</span> Coordination of multiple robots as a system

Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This idea emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs.

iCub Open source robotics humanoid robot testbed

iCub is a one meter tall open source robotics humanoid robot testbed for research into human cognition and artificial intelligence.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to automation:

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.

Electroadhesion is the electrostatic effect of astriction between two surfaces subjected to an electrical field. Applications include the retention of paper on plotter surfaces, astrictive robotic prehension, electroadhesive displays, etc. Clamping pressures in the range of 0.5 to 1.5 N/cm2 have been claimed. Currently, the maximum lateral pressure achievable through electroadhesion is 85.6 N/cm2.

In machine learning, systems which employ offline learning do not change their approximation of the target function when the initial training phase has been completed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dmitri Dolgov</span> Russian-American businessman (born 1977/1978)

Dmitri Dolgov is a Russian-American engineer who is the co-chief executive officer of Waymo. Previously, he worked on self-driving cars at Toyota and Stanford University for the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007). Dolgov then joined Waymo's predecessor, Google's Self-Driving Car Project, where he was an engineer and head of software. He has also been Google X's lead scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Velocity obstacle</span> Term in robotics and motion planning

In robotics and motion planning, a velocity obstacle, commonly abbreviated VO, is the set of all velocities of a robot that will result in a collision with another robot at some moment in time, assuming that the other robot maintains its current velocity. If the robot chooses a velocity inside the velocity obstacle then the two robots will eventually collide, if it chooses a velocity outside the velocity obstacle, such a collision is guaranteed not to occur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Any-angle path planning</span> Algorithm to find Euclidean shortest paths

Any-angle path planning algorithms are pathfinding algorithms that search for a Euclidean shortest path between two points on a grid map while allowing the turns in the path to have any angle. The result is a path that cuts directly through open areas and has relatively few turns. More traditional pathfinding algorithms such as A* either lack in performance or produce jagged, indirect paths.

Machine ethics is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence concerned with adding or ensuring moral behaviors of man-made machines that use artificial intelligence, otherwise known as artificial intelligent agents. Machine ethics differs from other ethical fields related to engineering and technology. It should not be confused with computer ethics, which focuses on human use of computers. It should also be distinguished from the philosophy of technology, which concerns itself with technology's grander social effects.

Tendon-driven robots (TDR) are robots whose limbs mimic biological musculoskeletal systems. They use plastic straps to mimic muscles and tendons. Such robots are claimed to move in a "more natural" way than traditional robots that use rigid metal or plastic limbs controlled by geared actuators. TDRs can also help understand how biomechanics relates to embodied intelligence and cognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future of Life Institute</span> International nonprofit research institute

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization which aims to steer transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from large-scale risks, with a focus on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). FLI's work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, United States government, and European Union institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Campaign to Stop Killer Robots</span> Coalition of organizations

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a coalition of non-governmental organizations who seek to pre-emptively ban lethal autonomous weapons.

Existential risk from artificial general intelligence refers to the idea that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to human extinction or an irreversible global catastrophe.


PRAC (Probabilistic Action Cores) is an interpreter for natural-language instructions for robotic applications developed at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bremen, Germany, and is supported in parts by the European Commission and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Regulation of algorithms, or algorithmic regulation, is the creation of laws, rules and public sector policies for promotion and regulation of algorithms, particularly in artificial intelligence and machine learning. For the subset of AI algorithms, the term regulation of artificial intelligence is used. The regulatory and policy landscape for artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging issue in jurisdictions globally, including in the European Union. Regulation of AI is considered necessary to both encourage AI and manage associated risks, but challenging. Another emerging topic is the regulation of blockchain algorithms and is mentioned along with regulation of AI algorithms. Many countries have enacted regulations of high frequency trades, which is shifting due to technological progress into the realm of AI algorithms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margarita Chli</span> Greek computer vision and robotics researcher

Margarita Chli is an assistant professor and leader of the Vision for Robotics Lab at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. Chli is a leader in the field of computer vision and robotics and was on the team of researchers to develop the first fully autonomous helicopter with onboard localization and mapping. Chli is also the Vice Director of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. Her research currently focuses on developing visual perception and intelligence in flying autonomous robotic systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alois Christian Knoll</span> German roboticist

Alois Christian Knoll is German computer scientist and professor at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He is head of the Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Embedded Systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jürgen Sturm</span> German software engineer

Jürgen Sturm is a German software engineer, entrepreneur and academic. He is a Senior Staff Software Engineering Manager at Intrinsic, where he works on developing a robot SDK aimed at facilitating and reducing the cost of integrating AI-/ML-powered robots into industrial manufacturing processes.

References

  1. ↑ Dominik B. O. Boesl, Martina Bode: Technology Governance. In: IEEE (Hrsg.): 2016 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Innovative Business Practices for the Transformation of Societies (EmergiTech). IEEE Xplore, Mauritius 2016, ISBN   978-1-5090-0706-6, S. 421 – 425, doi : 10.1109/EmergiTech.2016.7737378.
  2. ↑ Peter Asaro, Jason Millar, Kristen Thomasen: We Robot 2015 Conference – Robotic Governance Panel. University of Washington School of Law, 10. April 2015
  3. ↑ Dominik B. O. Boesl, Bernd Liepert: 4 Robotic Revolutions – proposing a holistic phase model describing future disruptions in the evolution of robotics and automation and the rise of a new Generation ‘R’ of Robotic Natives. In: IEEE (Hrsg.): 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). IEEE Xplore 2016, ISBN   978-1-5090-3762-9, ISSN 2153-0866, S. 1262 – 1267, doi : 10.1109/IROS.2016.7759209
  4. ↑ Dominik B. O. Boesl, Martina Bode: Technology Governance. In: IEEE (Hrsg.): 2016 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Innovative Business Practices for the Transformation of Societies (EmergiTech). IEEE Xplore, Mauritius 2016, ISBN   978-1-5090-0706-6, S. 421 – 425, doi : 10.1109/EmergiTech.2016.7737378
  5. ↑ Robotic Governance Foundation: Robotic & A.I. Governance Foundation. In: Robotic & A.I. Governance. (roboticgovernance.com)
  6. ↑ Cellan-Jones, Rory. "Stephen Hawking – will AI kill or save humankind?". BBC News.
  7. ↑ Cellan-Jones, Rory. "Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind".
  8. ↑ Hakan Tanriverdi. "So will Elon Musk künstliche Intelligenz bändigen". Süddeutsche Zeitung.
  9. ↑ Maya Kosoff. "Elon Musk's Advice for Surviving a Robot Takeover". The Hive.
  10. ↑ "Elon Musk: Become cyborgs or risk humans being turned into robots' pets". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2000-12-19.
  11. ↑ Gates, B (2007). "Bill Gates: A Robot in Every Home". Scientific American. 296 (1): 58–65. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0107-58. PMID   17186834.
  12. ↑ "Robots that take people's jobs should pay taxes, says Bill Gates". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2000-12-19.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.