Robot ethics and Roboethics
Description
In recent years, more and more people have been concerned about ethical issues related to the deployment of robots, especially for military purposes. There are even calls worldwide to ban the use of unmanned armed military aircraft (drones). Roboethicists are considering how to think about these ethical issues and how to arrive at an ethical use of robots. Robot ethics, on the other hand, aims to outsource ethics to the robots themselves and allow them to reason ethically themselves. But how do we do that? How can we implement ethics? Aren't current ethics too vague, not only for robots but also for humans? I will try to shed some light on these issues, starting with ancient Greece, where a court existed that dealt with cases against inanimate objects, and ending by pointing out some developments from modern logic that not only shed light on some of the issues discussed (e.g. the question of who is responsible for ethical misconduct of autonomous robots), but are also so clear and unambiguous that they could potentially be implemented in computer programmes
Speaker(s)
Gert-Jan Lokhorst has studied medicine (Master's degree, 1980) and philosophy (Master's degree, cum laude, 1985, PhD degree, 1992). He has had positions (in several academic institutions) in the following areas:
* philosophy of medicine,
* neural networks,
* deontic expert systems,
* philosophical logic,
* philosophy of mind and philosophy of artificial intelligence,
* philosophy and ethics of science and technology.
His research interests include:
- Philosophical logic (especially deontic logic, epistemic logic, fuzzy logic, paraconsistent logic, logic of action, logic in AI)
- Philosophy of artificial intelligence, philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of mind
- History and philosophy of the neurosciences
- Philosophy and ethics of medicine and technology
He wrote two books on the philosophy of neuroscience (in Dutch): Homo Duplex: Philosophical Interpretations of the Split-Brain Syndrome and Brain and Consciousness: The Mind-Brain Problem in Contemporary Neuroscience). He published papers in prestigious refereed journals. He is a member of the editorial board of Psyche and associate editor of Neuroethics
Location
Utrecht
Organiser
Philosophy & Technology
Name and contact details for information
Further information from drs.ing. Henk Uijttenhout (vz), tel: 070 - 3875293 / 06 - 42505844 or via the e-mail address below