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Author: RISTEX Asada PJ

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We would like to invite you to submit your articles to Interaction Studies Special Issue on Ethics, Law, and Psychology towards Responsible Robotics for the Society.

Please see here for more details.

Interaction Studies
Special Issue on “How will Autonomous Robots and Systems Influence the Society? Debate from technological, philosophical, ethical, legal, and social implications perspectives”

Co-Guest Editors: Minoru Asada, Raja Chatila, Tatsuhiko Inatani, Phillip Morgan, and Yuji Kawai

Submission Deadline: December 1st, 2020
Acceptance/rejection notification: June 1st, 2021
Publication: October 1st, 2021

Recent rapid progresses of autonomous robots and AI have been changing our lives not simply with higher capabilities in many functions, but rather in ways of interactions between humans and machines. In such situations, the meaning of autonomy in artificial systems may cause over-expectation or sometimes misunderstanding for robots’ capabilities. It’s time to reconsider the meaning of “autonomy” in artificial systems from not only technological aspect, but from more broader perspectives such as moral, ethical, legal and social ones. The aim of this special issue is to share and discuss the potential issues of the current and future autonomous robots and systems. Fundamental questions are:

  1. To what extent does increasing machine autonomy affect morality and ethics?
  2. What’s a new relationship between humans and advanced robots and AI systems?
  3. How will moral and ethical issues change to adapt with these technical advancements?
  4. Can the current legal systems handle the accidents caused by human-machine interactions?
  5. What are social risks in a symbiotic society with them?
  6. How do we optimise human-centred cyber security of autonomous robots and human-machine systems?

Further, we are thinking about the design for AI and autonomous systems with human capabilities (such as abstract thinking and adaptability) and beliefs (such as trust and acceptability). Because the issues are so broad, we will call for papers to fill the gap and to enrich the discussions.

The interest topics of the special issue include, but are not limited to:

  • Autonomy
  • AI systems
  • Symbiotic society
  • Morality
  • Ethics
  • Legal system
  • Social interaction
  • Trust
  • Responsibility
  • Reasoning
  • Adaptability
  • Human-machine interaction
  • Acceptability
  • Cyber security
  • Liability
  • Accountability
  • Responsible/Ethical Design

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Symbiotic Intelligent Systems Research Center at Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives, Osaka University will hold the 3rd International Symposium on Symbiotic Intelligent Systems on Nov. 19 - 20, 2020. We invite many outstanding researchers in the fields of robotics, AI, cognitive science, neuroscience and ethics to discuss a future human-robot symbiotic society.

This symposium is co-sponsored by our project, and we invited Prof. Ronald C. Arkin (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Prof. Atsuo Kishimoto (Osaka University) to discuss ELSI on autonomous robots/AI.

See here for the detail and registration.

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We would like to invite you to submit your articles to Advanced Robotics Special Issue on Ethics, Law, and Psychology towards Responsible Robotics for the Society.

Please see here for more details.

Advanced Robotics
Special Issue on Ethics, Law, and Psychology towards Responsible Robotics for the Society

Co-Editors: Yuji Kawai, Tatsuhiko Inatani, and Fabio Fossa

Submission Deadline: 31 August, 2020
Publication: May 2021 (Vol. 35, Issue 9)

Robot technology has been expanding from closed spaces such as factories to open spaces such as homes and streets. Cleaning robots have already been introduced in many houses, and many robots for social communication with humans have been developed. Furthermore, it is envisioned that many automated vehicles will drive around cities in the near future. The spread of these robots and artificial intelligence technologies will drastically change our society and is expected to bring unprecedented affluence and well-being to people’s lives. However, there is also a concern that new social problems that have never been considered, so-called ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues), will occur as robots begin to autonomously work close to humans. To address them, transdisciplinary debate from technological, ethical, legal, social, and scientific perspectives is required. It is now time for not only philosophers, jurists, and policy makers but also scientists and engineers to consider social implications of developing robot technology and to be responsible for the global community. This special issue aims to explore problems in social implementation of advanced robots and discuss how to solve or manage them from diverse research areas to develop truly acceptable robots. The interest topics of the special issue include, but are not limited to:

  • Potential issues in applications of autonomous robots in society
  • Methodology for ethical risk assessments for robots
  • Design for artificial moral agents
  • Laws for autonomous systems/robots
  • Social implications of advanced robots
  • Subjective trust, responsibility, and sense of agency in human-robot interactions

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The video recording was released here.

In light of COVID-19, this workshop will be held virtually on Zoom webinar. Attendance to the virtual workshop is free of charge. Please register here for participation.

We will hold the International Workshop: "How will Autonomous Robots and Systems Influence Society? Debate from technological, philosophical, ethical, legal, and social implications perspectives" in Paris, France on June 4, 2020. This workshop is a joint event of the IEEE ICRA 2020, one of the largest international conferences in robotics.

Please see here for more detailed information.

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Symbiotic Intelligent Systems Research Center at Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives, Osaka University will hold the 1st International Symposium on Symbiotic Intelligent Systems on Jan. 23rd - 25th, 2019.

Prof. Asada, Dr. Inatani, and Dr. Kawai will give presentations in the symposium.

Its detail and registration pages are here.