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Ethics, the Only Safeguard Against the Possible Negative Impacts of Autonomous Robots?

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Robotics and Well-Being

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering ((ISCA,volume 95))

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Abstract

Companion robots will become closer and closer to us. They will enter our intimacy. This proximity will raise ethical problems that strict technology per se will probably be just unable to solve. Even if research tries to find out how ethical rules can be implemented in the robots’ cognitive architecture, does the ethics implemented by the developer fit with the user’s ethics? In this paper, we propose a pragmatic approach to this question by focusing on the aspect of responsibility. In case of misbehavior of a robot, who is responsible? And even more pragmatically, who will pay for the eventually caused damages?

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Innovation, SoftBank Robotics Europe, Paris, France

    Rodolphe Gelin

Authors
  1. Rodolphe Gelin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rodolphe Gelin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Maria Isabel Aldinhas Ferreira

  2. Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior TĂ©cnico, Lisbon, Portugal

    JoĂŁo Silva Sequeira

  3. Endoenergy Systems Limited, Cambridge, UK

    Gurvinder Singh Virk

  4. School of Engineering, London South Bank University, London, UK

    Mohammad Osman Tokhi

  5. Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

    Endre E. Kadar

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Gelin, R. (2019). Ethics, the Only Safeguard Against the Possible Negative Impacts of Autonomous Robots?. In: Aldinhas Ferreira, M., Silva Sequeira, J., Singh Virk, G., Tokhi, M., E. Kadar, E. (eds) Robotics and Well-Being. Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, vol 95. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12524-0_10

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