Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy announced last March that by the end of 2007 it will have a Robot Ethics Charter ready to operate. Some details from the document were leaked by the South Korean institution at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation last April 14 in Rome.  Sim Hag-Bong, chief manager of the robot team at the Governmental ministry, said that Koreans will be “interacting with humanoid robots by 2015”.

Image / J. Istilart

“By 2020, it is predicted that every household in Korea will have at least one robot”, he added.

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Due to a fast aging trend in their population, the Korean and Japanese Governments are spending heavily on the production of robots to accompany the elderly. In view of this demographic reality and the philosophical approach of some oriental cultures towards technology, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine some science fiction principles appearing in that Korean Robot Ethics Charter; some more fantastic than the ones presented by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in his 1942 short story 'Runaround'.
Three Laws of Robotics

In Japan, animated objects can be traced back to the XVIII century with the Karakuri crafts, or small animated characters such as the tea serving doll. Their admiration for robots reaches spiritual levels.

On December 12, 2005, a Japanese robot company called Tmsuk took their prototype Kiyomori to the Munakata Taisha Shrine to pray for robot safety and for robot industry success. Every year, that same day millions of people go to Mexico City’s Capital on a pilgrimage to venerate the Virgin of Guadalupe. Jorge Solis did his own pilgrimage all the way to Tokyo just to work in the Takanishi Laboratory, which revolutionises the industry and dazzles us every time it releases a new prototype.

Jorge, a Mexican national, works on a project that enables a robot flutist to automatically add expression to its playing. He was quite impressed to find out " how Japanese people interacted with robots in an emotional way".

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Europe’s approach / Top

In 2005, the European Robotics Research Network funded the Research Atelier on Roboethics, which aimed to integrate a Roboethics Roadmap. The fundamental principles of this document, in which more than 50 technologists and academics were involved, are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Commission of Human Rights (1998). It reviews the ethical issues expected to be raised by the industry in the next 20 years.

The European's document target “is not the robot and its artificial ethics, but the human ethics of the robots’ designers, manufacturers and users.”

Pericle Salvini provides robotitians with new knowledge carried out by Neuroscientists and collaborates in the European discussion on Roboethics. He believes the principles reviewed by this academic community represent also the "ethical guidelines of countries that don’t invest a great deal in robotics. Although not all the countries are involved in the discussion of Roboethics, we are referring to rights that theoretically are Universal to Europeans”, he said.

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Un-souled soldiers / Top

Although autonomous systems and unmanned vehicles have already been used by the US military since the first Gulf War and by Korea during its border conflict, the use of artificial intelligence in the battlefield is one of the most controversial issues on discussion.  

Ron Arkin develops technology for unmanned vehicles used by the US Navy. He was one of the organisers of the workshop on Roboethics held in Rome last April, where he presented a US Army plan to conduct a survey regarding the ethical basis for the use of lethality by autonomous systems. For him, the debate is not whether or not we should have wars, because he believes “they will always exist.” His underlying thesis is that “robots can ultimately be more humane than human beings in military situations”. So, does this mean that when robots become a reality in the battlefield, we should then trust that the US Army will follow international treaties like the Geneva Convention?

Image / J. Istilart

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According to a mandate released in 2000, the US Congress wants the Defence Department “-within a decade- to make one-third of all operational deep-strike aircraft unmanned, and within 15 years ensure that one-third of all ground combat vehicles are remotely operated”.

Industrial robolution / Top

Who is responsible if a robot does something to damage someone; for example if a robot in a factory accidentally kills a person? Is it the factory owner; the person who sold them the robot; the robot builder; its hardware designer; is it the person who designed the robot software; or the robot itself?

The current legislation in Britain proposes the booby-trap example as the rule to follow in these cases, being the setter of the trap the one guilty of murder if the artefact is triggered and kills its objective.

Another thing to take into account in future judicial instruments regarding our interaction with robots is whether these machines should be allowed to record and share conversations and video, and if so, which ones should do it.

For Richard Walker, technical director of London-based Shadow Robot Company, when robots become a commonplace in the mass production companies around the world, humans will treat them “as badly as people treat other species”.

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“At the moment, the main argument for not using a robot is because it is much cheaper to condemn a human to a lifetime of degrading and pointless chain labour than it is to use a machine”, he reckoned.

 

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