Dr. Machiel Van der Loos forwarded me an article on Paro from the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago. Paro is a furry baby seal robot with the potential to impact people emotionally: it has two huge eyes that can stare at you adoringly and it can move its body parts like a real pup. Emotional bonds with artifacts, such as objects, etc, have been discussed for hundreds and thousands of years in literature. The question for today’s discussion is, ‘Would our emotional bonds with Paro lead to a happy ending, or an ethical ending?’

According to the Trendhunter magazine, a Chinese robotics company called Siasun has built a robot that:
… has the ability to spot gas leaks, monitor your health, talk to you when you are alone, communicate with the police, send text messages and take phone calls when you are not at home.
The robot is built for to take on the role of caretakers for the elderly population. To a lot of people, the above mentioned features of the robot hardly seem enough to call the robot a ‘nanny robot’ or a ‘caretaker …

Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm – tech – 18 November 2008 – New Scientist.
I am not sure why this article slipped through my radar. But this article from New Scientist is a somewhat humorous listing of six ways we could build robots that do humans no harm.
It mentions the authors of the book ‘Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong’. Although this article is not a comprehensive summary of the book, it is a fun read for those of you who may have contemplated the …

Safety issues loom as humanoid invasion approaches – tech – 10 March 2010 – New Scientist.
More and more people are asking the question ‘how can we make it safe to hang out with robots in our daily life?’
In the New Scientist article, Chris Melhuish looks at how facial expressions of a humanoid can be used to make the humanoids intentions more transparent to human users, so that we would know what to expect from the robot.

The media was filled with sex robot talk early January of this year. In particular, there’s been heavy media coverage on Roxxxy, a female sex robot developed by the company TrueCompanion.

Everyone knows that sex sells, and the idea of sex with human-like artifacts has been with us since the myths of ancient Greece – ask David Levy or read his book. But just because it sells does not justify the ethical issues surrounding the product.

It’s been a while since my last batch of blog posts, and I’d like to start off a new batch of posts with a little bit of conservatism.
January 15th 1929, about 19 years from today, Martin Luther King Jr. was born. As a son of Baptist minister, and a Baptist minister himself, he argued that
… progress in science and technology has not been equaled by “moral progress” — instead, humanity is suffering from a “moral and spiritual lag.”
He also preached that
“material advancement was meaningless without an accompanying moral structure” …
“The richer we have …

The following is a very interesting survey results conducted by Zogby International
For the full coverage on the survey results, please visit Cyborg Status – Forbes.com (August 5th, 2009).

–If you could have the Internet wired directly into your brain, would you do so?
Yes: 13%
No: 82%
Not sure: 5%.
(We asked the same question in October 2007, and found 11% said yes.)
–Would you agree to have a computer chip implanted in your brain if it would make you immune to disease?
Yes: 25%
No: 54%
Not sure: 21%
–Would you agree to have a computer …

The Year in Robotics from www.technologyreview.com highlights robotics research highlights from year 2009.
Happy New Year Everyone!

Two days ago, I went to watch the movie Avatar.
I thought the plot was quite blend, but that was soon forgotten when I started to see the linkage between the idea of singularity and the movie’s storyline.
For those of you who are new to the idea of singularity the following paragraph is my attempt to describe it to you using my limited knowledge of the topic:
Key promoters of the theory/science – also called apocalyptic AI – are Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec. Their singularity argument is that machine intelligence will …

The following suggested reading was passed on to me by a good friend of mine, Francisco Grajales (@Ciscogiii).
This New York Time book review summarizes some interesting content from Michael Belfiore’s book ‘The Department of Mad Scientists’.
The following excerpts introduce a few interesting roboethics questions from the NYT book review: Book Review – History of Darpa – ‘The Department of Mad Scientists,’ by Michael Belfiore – Review – NYTimes.com.
So maybe we’ll let robots drive our cars. But would you let a robot cut you open? That’s Darpa’s next project. In minimally invasive surgery, doctors insert …