Anyone interested in talking about roboethics in Taiwan next May?
AAMAS (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems) conference will be covering the topic. If you’re planning to head to Asia next May, you might want to check out their call for papers: http://www.aamas2011.tw/index.html
AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 by merging three highly-respected meetings:  International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL); and International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA). The …

The New York Times reports that a “Predator drone pilot played down two warnings about the presence of children before military commanders ordered a helicopter attack that killed 23 Afghan civilians…”
The article also brings up issues surrounding the uses of remote controlled Predators. Does it really cloud the remote controller’s judgment? Does the increased distance between the drone and the controller eliminate the element of guilt in making military decisions?
“But in his desire to support the ground forces, General Otto wrote, the pilot “had a strong desire to find weapons,” and this …

An exciting new conference covering roboethics issues: TILT Perspectives 2011.
“The Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT)” Submission of abstract is due October 15th 2010. Notification of acceptance and invitation to write a full paper is November 1st 2010. Conference itself will take place 11th and 12th of April 2011 Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

I am becoming quite fond of RSA animations, and they are becoming more of my idea tinkering entertainment sources during dinner. If any of the roboethicists out there are a fan of either TED videos or RSA animations, please do watch the talk by Jeremy Rifkin.
Starting with the story of mirror neuron discovery, Jeremy Rifkin talks about how as empathic beings we can build an empathic civilisation at a global level and can really build a better world.
One of the issues of social robots is the unknown long-term social effects …