Subject objects

Global Philosophy, 2024

This manuscript makes a unique attempt to describe humanoid robots as “artificial persons,” and while doing so, it sheds light on intriguing, less-debated topics like relationships between humans and artificially intelligent humanoids (AI) and the identity of AI humanoids. The goal of this manuscript is to present the argument that suggests that artificially intelligent humanoid robots are a remarkable creation of human ingenuity and are distinct from typical machines, as they exhibit qualities that extend beyond mere mechanics and aim to reach a degree of complexity akin to humans.

SSRN, 2023

This manuscript makes a unique attempt to describe humanoid robots as "artificial persons", and while doing so, it sheds light on intriguing, less-debated topics like relationships between humans and artificially intelligent humanoids (AI) and the identity of AI robots. These humanoids are distinct from typical machines, as they exhibit qualities that extend beyond mere mechanics and aim to reach a degree of complexity akin to humans, albeit not yet fully accomplished. They are a remarkable creation of human ingenuity. They possess the ability to communicate, learn, generate information, and assist humans in a multitude of tasks. They have the ability to form strong connections with people and work together in many ways. Therefore, it seems logical to work on the accountability of these humanoids and try giving them a unique identification or digital signature that may be related in some manner to their owner's biometric identity. The manuscript employs text analysis to support its arguments and, in the process, delves into the solutions to the aforementioned issues by exploring the concepts proposed by renowned theorists, classical philosophers, and psychologists.

Art Inqiuiry, 2020

The objective of this paper is to discuss the commonplace of man in relation to the theory of mimesis in the context of the analysis of current examples of anthropomorphic and intelligent robots. Two aspects of the analysis have been taken into consideration. The first one is linked with the similarities of such robots to the idealized human body and the second one acknowledges mental similarities between the robots and humans, which entail the question of artificial intelligence. Most of the quoted examples derive from the world of art which has become an interdisciplinary area of collaboration between artists and engineers. This contribution contains a comparative study and a part of it, in many cases, involves the contributor's observations on the presented intelligent robots.

Journal of Moral Theology

The question “Can a robot be a person?” has emerged of late in the field of bioethics. The paper addresses the question in dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas. It begins with something like an archeological reconstruction of personhood in modernity, in order to locate the context out of which the question posed, “can a robot be a person?” might take on meaning. Descartes, Hume and Kant are the most important exponents of the story, their position emerging in direct contradiction with the classical metaphysics of the person, such as one finds in Thomas Aquinas. Levinas rejects the rationalist perspective of a bodiless mind, a person reduced to her cognitive capacities, no less than the empirical version of a mindless body, both understandings of personhood being de facto prevalent in contemporary bioethics, especially in the Anglo-American version of it. On the other hand, as Levinas suggests, to be a person is to be “manifested in the exteriority of the face, which is not the disclosure ...

International Journal of Social Robotics, 2021

Both designers and users of social robots tend to anthropomorphize robots. Focusing on the question how to conceptualize the relation between robots and humans, this paper first outlines two opposite philosophical views regarding this relation, which are connected to various normative responses to anthropomorphism and anthropomorphization. Then it argues for a third view: navigating between what it calls "naïve instrumentalism" and "uncritical posthumanism", it develops a hermeneutic, relational, and critical approach. Paradoxically, by unpacking the human dimension of robotics in its use and development, this view enables a critical discussion of anthropomorphizing robots. At the same time, and again somewhat paradoxically, it avoids a naïve instrumentalist position by taking robots' role as an instrument in a larger con-technology seriously. As such, the third view questions the dualism assumed in the debate. The paper then explores what this means for the field of social robotics and the education of computer scientists and engineers. It proposes a reform based on a relational understanding of the field itself and offers suggestions for the role of users-citizens.

International journal of social robotics, 2010

The naming of robots bears witness to their emergence as a new ontological category, birthed in robotics competitions, forming a laboring companion species. This thesis is the result of a sociological survey into the naming practices of competition robots, informed by my auto- ethnographic research into the culture of robot competitions. Many interesting names and connections appeared. Most robots in competitions were named and gendered as well. Names reflected human/machine hybridity, as well as anthropomorphism. The names demonstrate interesting levels of ‘subjectification’ in even the least anthropomorphic or lifelike of robots. Overall, this data supports the ‘robot as a new ontological category’ hypothesis (Kahn Jr. et al), and further poses the questions, how does this come about and what does that mean? Donna Haraway has made interspecies translation her specialty and so I knit this investigation of a new being becoming into her ‘cats cradle’ with both factual and fictional robots. My conclusion is that robot naming in competitions is a performance of companion species co-shaping in the contact zone between organic/technic, master/slave and subject/object, supporting the ‘robots as new ontological category’ hypothesis. Robot naming demonstrates human-robot social relationships and both slave, pet and hybrid naming characteristics. My thesis suggests that competitions function as a birth rite of passage, and that naming dubs or introduces the new being to the world and brings the world into the robot. KEYWORDS: Human-Robot Interaction, Social Theory, Cultural Theory, Onomastics.

University of Manchester, 2021

This dissertation investigates human-robot encounters and how robot existence here is calibrated to the social lives of humans. Based on a year of fieldwork in two laboratories dedicated to the development of human-robot interaction in the Kansai region of Japan, this dissertation follows professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, his associates, and the humanoid beings that populate the two laboratories, Intelligent Robotics Laboratories and Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories. From within the walls of these laboratories, I investigate how the roboticists strive to make robots with systemic and affective capacity for relating to humans. I approach the laboratories as a specific community that calibrates the social through technical means and through staged and choreographed encounters between humanoids and humans. In these calibrations, the roboticists standardize and attune the humans and robots to each other through patterns of communication, linear algorithms, material affordances and limitations, dynamics and speed of movement. Equally, the roboticists apply models of human behaviour, and repertories of cultural expressions. The calibration of the robots’ social existence involves a search for social and communicative standards that both robots and humans can partake in. But such calibrations are not harmonious, and this work goes beyond the machinic and ordered regimes of calculation. Through their work, the roboticists themselves are affected by the on-going intimate tinkering and calibration of their robots. The robots are unruly, ambiguous, spectacular beings that provoke strong reactions of intimacy, care, recognition and affective uncertainty. Such tensions create affective relations that rouse sensations of excitement, alienation or confusion and render the robots open for conflicting interpretation and meanings. In the staging of the encounters between humans and robots, the roboticists try to frame these tensions in productive ways through performative expression that juxtaposes conventional understanding of human sociality, with technical capabilities, and the promise of the innovatively new.

Studia Universitatis Babeş‐Bolyai Theologia Orthodoxa, 2020

Technological innovations in Artificial Intelligence have reached a state where human-like robotics are endowed with rich personality and cognitive intelligence, able to engage emotionally and deeply with people. This progress in developing humanoids opens the way for a robot to obtain not just human, but superhuman attributes, such as omniscience and omnipotence, autonomy and self-awareness, freedom and interpersonality. On the other hand, this futurist situation could be considered as a possible threat to Christian anthropology, since it reaches a creation having the likeness of humanity that seem to retain a sense of personhood. This paper attempts to confront these challenges facing Christian theology today through first, revisiting Christian anthropology and the Patristic views on personhood, which look at a human being as an unfathomable mystery. Second, it presents the implications of this theology upon the arguments that consider humanoids as persons, showing that this postmodern issue is not just a crisis in anthropology, but also has its roots in a crisis in knowledge. Finally, this paper affirms that Christians are called to embrace science and technological progress. This can be done when rationalism is led by the intellect, the spiritual cognitive center of humankind. In doing so, humankind reaches epignosis, the correct or divine knowledge, the gift of true perception, or right discernment, which surpasses all rational human knowledge and algorithms, and directs all technological powers to God’s glory

International Journal of Social Robotics, 2021

The central interest of this paper is the anthropomorphic social robot Ai-Da (Aidan Meller Gallery/Oxford University), perceived as an actor in the interplay of cultural and representational gestures. These gestures determine how this robot is presented-that is, how its activities are articulated, interpreted and promoted. This paper criticises the use of a transhistorical discourse in the presentational strategies around this robot, since this discourse reinforces the so-called "myth of a machine". The discussion focuses on the individuation and embodiment of this drawing robot. It is argued that the choice to provide Ai-Da with an evocative silicone face, coupled with an anthropomorphic body, is a socio-political decision that shapes public imaginaries about social robots in general.