ROBOPHILOSOPHY

December 29, 2020December 29, 2020

Proceedings on Social Robotics

The book “Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics” (eds. Marco Nørskov, Johanna Seibt, and Oliver Santiago Quick) was published in December 2020 by IOS Press. From the publisher’s information: “Robophilosophy conferences have been the world’s largest venues for humanities research in and on social robotics. The book at hand presents the proceedings of Robophilosophy Conference 2020: Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics, the fourth event in the international, biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series, which brought together close to 400 participants from 29 countries. The speakers of the conference, whose contributions are collected in this volume, were invited to offer concrete proposals for how the Humanities can help to shape a future where social robotics is guided by the goals of enhancing socio-cultural values rather than by utility alone. The book is divided into 3 parts; Abstracts of Plenaries, which contains 6 plenary sessions; Session Papers, with 44 papers under 8 thematic categories; and Workshops, containing 25 items on 5 selected topics.” (Website IOS Press) Contributors include Robert Sparrow, Alan Winfield, Aimee van Wynsberghe, John Danaher, Johanna Seibt, Marco Nørskov, Peter Remmers, John P. Sullins, and Oliver Bendel.

December 17, 2020December 17, 2020

Welcome to the AI Opera

Blob Opera is an AI experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. According to the website, it pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument, namely the voice. “We developed a machine learning model trained on the voices of four opera singers in order to create an engaging experiment for everyone, regardless of musical skills. Tenor, Christian Joel, bass Frederick Tong, mezzo‑soprano Joanna Gamble and soprano Olivia Doutney recorded 16 hours of singing. In the experiment you don’t hear their voices, but the machine learning model’s understanding of what opera singing sounds like, based on what it learnt from them.” (Blop Opera) You can drag the blobs up and down to change pitch – or forwards and backwards for different vowel sounds. It is not only pleasurable to hear the blobs, but also to see them. While singing, they look around and open and close their mouths. Even their tongues can be seen again and again.

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020

A Digital Supermodel

Cameron-James Wilson, 31, founded an agency for digital models in London in 2019, The Diigitals. He is the creator of the digital supermodel Shudu. “Since baffling the fashion and modeling world at large, he’s added virtuals Galaxia, Brenn, Dagny, Koffi, Margot, and Zhi to the Gram family.” (Virtual Humans, 4 May 2020) Galaxia is an alien model and has long, pointed ears and a long neck. Koffi is a male virtual influencer with a muscle-rich body, which he likes to show in sparse clothing. Shudu is the most famous avatar of the agency. At this year’s digital fashion shows in Paris and Milan, a number of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) models and avatars presented the new looks. Shudu was not there, which the creator explains in a SPIEGEL interview by the fact that it is still difficult to animate her to move like a real person. At the end Barbara Markert asks him what Shudu means to him. He answers: “It may sound crazy, but I feel a responsibility for this woman and the community she represents.” (SPIEGEL, 9 December 2020, own translation)

December 2, 2020December 2, 2020

Young Girls could Kill Autonomous Driving

On behalf of Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel, M. Hashem Birahjakli investigated possible attacks on self-driving cars as part of his final thesis in 2020. The supervisor was Safak Korkut. In the chapter “Attacking Scenarios on Sensors” the student divided into invasive attacks and non-invasive attacks. In the section on invasive attacks he dealt with different sensors and examined possible attacks based on scenarios: vision-based cameras (chewing gum, lipstick, and nail polish; spraying paint; transparent colored foil; concave lenses), radar (chaff, countermeasure), lidar (mirror and reflective objects; dust; face powder), inertial measuring unit (magnet), and sonar (carrot and stick; duct tape). In the section on non-invasive attacks he dealt with fake traffic signs, invisible or fake obstacles, and roadside attacks. The results of the work suggest that every 14-year-old girl could disable a self-driving car. So far, hacking has been seen as the greatest threat to autonomous driving. But while not everyone can hack, almost everyone carries chewing gum or lipstick. The automotive industry should consider this threat seriously.

December 2, 2020December 2, 2020

Evolutionary Machine Ethics

Luís Moniz Pereira is one of the best known and most active machine ethicists in the world. Together with his colleague The Anh Han he wrote the article “Evolutionary Machine Ethics” for the “Handbuch Maschinenethik” (“Handbook Machine Ethics”). Editor is Oliver Bendel (Zurich, Switzerland). From the abstract: “Machine ethics is a sprouting interdisciplinary field of enquiry arising from the need of imbuing autonomous agents with some capacity for moral decision-making. Its overall results are not only important for equipping agents with a capacity for moral judgment, but also for helping better understand morality, through the creation and testing of computational models of ethics theories. Computer models have become well defined, eminently observable in their dynamics, and can be transformed incrementally in expeditious ways. We address, in work reported and surveyed here, the emergence and evolution of cooperation in the collective realm. We discuss how our own research with Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) modelling and experimentation leads to important insights for machine ethics, such as the design of moral machines, multi-agent systems, and contractual algorithms, plus their potential application in human settings too.” (Abstract) Springer VS published the “Handbuch Maschinenethik” in October 2019. Since then it has been downloaded thousands of times.

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020

Research Program on Responsible AI

“HASLER RESPONSIBLE AI” is a research program of the Hasler Foundation open to research institutions within the higher education sector or non-commercial research institutions outside the higher education sector. The foundation explains the goals of the program in a call for project proposals: “The HASLER RESPONSIBLE AI program will support research projects that investigate machine-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence systems whose results meet requirements on responsibility and trustworthiness. Projects are expected to seriously engage in the application of the new models and methods in scenarios that are relevant to society. In addition, projects should respect the interdisciplinary character of research in the area of RESPONSIBLE AI by involving the necessary expertise.” (CfPP by Hasler Foundation) Deadline for submission of short proposals is 24 January 2021. More information at haslerstiftung.ch.

November 26, 2020November 26, 2020

About the “Handbuch Maschinenethik”

The “Handbuch Maschinenethik” (ed. Oliver Bendel) was published by Springer VS over a year ago. It brings together contributions from leading experts in the fields of machine ethics, robot ethics, technology ethics, philosophy of technology and robot law. It has become a comprehensive, exemplary and unique book. In a way, it forms a counterpart to the American research that dominates the discipline: Most of the authors (among them Julian Nida-Rümelin, Catrin Misselhorn, Eric Hilgendorf, Monika Simmler, Armin Grunwald, Matthias Scheutz, Janina Loh and Luís Moniz Pereira) come from Europe and Asia. They had been working on the project since 2017 and submitted their contributions continuously until it went to print. The editor, who has been working on information, robot and machine ethics for 20 years and has been doing intensive research on machine ethics for nine years, is pleased to report that 53,000 downloads have already been recorded – quite a lot for a highly specialized book. The first article for a second edition is also available, namely “The BESTBOT Project” (in English like some other contributions) …

November 19, 2020November 19, 2020

New Journal on AI and Ethics

Springer launches a new journal entitled “AI and Ethics”. This topic has been researched for several years from various perspectives, including information ethics, robot ethics (aka roboethics) and machine ethics. From the description: “AI and Ethics seeks to promote informed debate and discussion of the ethical, regulatory, and policy implications that arise from the development of AI. It will focus on how AI techniques, tools, and technologies are developing, including consideration of where these developments may lead in the future. The journal will provide opportunities for academics, scientists, practitioners, policy makers, and the public to consider how AI might affect our lives in the future, and what implications, benefits, and risks might emerge. Attention will be given to the potential intentional and unintentional misuses of the research and technology presented in articles we publish. Examples of harmful consequences include weaponization, bias in face recognition systems, and discrimination and unfairness with respect to race and gender.

November 13, 2020November 13, 2020

Gates and Jones Ask Big Questions

Bill Gates will start his own series of podcasts on 16 November 2020. The title is “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions”. In a YouTube video (as well as in a description of the video) he and his partner explain what it’s all about. According to the description, the podcasts pair “Bill Gates with actress and writer Rashida Jones to tackle some of the biggest questions facing us today”: “Is it too late to solve climate change? Does everybody lie? Is inequality inevitable? Join them for deep dives into these questions” (YouTube, 12 November 2020). The podcasts will be available on Apple Podcasts and other services. Gates plans to give an overview on his own blog GatesNotes of all the episodes that have run so far, not to forget a transcript of each episode. Certainly there will also be statements on robotics and artificial intelligence – at least some episodes will deal with the modern workplace. Can one hope to get big answers to big questions? The future will show.