Robotics and artificial intelligence meet the humanities: some initiatives for ethics education and dissemination

The influence of the humanities on the study of a technological subject like robotics needs to rapidly grow, for the simple reason that robotics is becoming a part of humanity: assisting, interacting, and enabling people in an increasing number of ways in daily life. The robotics research community is well aware of the need for such a crossover with the humanities and many joint ventures are being undertaken, such as forums on “Robotics meets the Humanities” at main robotics conferences, the launching of research projects, and the publication of special issues in scientific journals. This cross-cutting has even led to a new discipline: Roboethics, a subfield of applied ethics studying both the positive and negative implications of robotics for individuals and society, with a view to inspire the moral design, development and use of so-called intelligent/autonomous robots, and help prevent their misuse against humankind. The discipline involves two main areas: legal regulation and ethical education. Regarding the former, institutions such as the European Parliament, the South Korean Robot Ethics Charter, the IEEE Standards Association, and the British Standards Institution are developing regulations for robot designers, programmers, and users. There are many options to integrate ethics education (or Humanities) in technological university degrees, ranging from including a professional ethics course in the syllabus, to allowing students to take certain credits or a minor in a Humanities Department, to even offering a combined degree, like the Computer Science and Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford. Prestigious associations such as IEEE and ACM include 18 knowledge areas in their Computer Science curricula, one of which is “Social Issues and Professional Practice”, so that “students develop an understanding of the relevant social, ethical, legal and professional issues”. To this end, some courses in this area recur to science fiction to exemplify conflictive situations, since narrative is a good way to engage students in safe discussion and reasoning about difficult and emotionally charged issues without making it personal. Some experiences along this line will be described.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft