Where AI Thrives, Religion May Struggle; Chicago Booth Review, March 26, 2024

 Jeff Cockrell, Chicago Booth Review; Where AI Thrives, Religion May Struggle

"The United States has seen one of the biggest drops: the share of its residents who said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque fell from 70 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2020, according to Gallup.

One potential factor is the proliferation of artificial intelligence and robotics, according to a team of researchers led by Chicago Booth’s Joshua Conrad Jackson and Northwestern’s Adam Waytz. The more exposed people are to automation technologies, the researchers find, the weaker their religious beliefs. They argue that the relationship is not coincidental and that “there are meaningful properties of automation which encourage religious decline."

Researchers and philosophers have pondered the connection between science and religion for many years. The German sociologist Max Weber spoke of science contributing to the “disenchantment of the world,” or the replacement of supernatural explanations for the workings of the universe with rational, scientific ones. Evidence from prior research doesn’t support a strong “disenchantment” effect, Jackson says, but he and his coresearchers suggest that AI and robotics may influence people’s beliefs in a way that science more generally does not."

One-third of US military could be robotic by 2039: Milley; Military Times, July 14, 2024

Riley Ceder, Military Times; One-third of US military could be robotic by 2039: Milley

"The 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff believes growing artificial intelligence and unmanned technology could lead to robotic military forces in the future.

“Ten to fifteen years from now, my guess is a third, maybe 25% to a third of the U.S. military will be robotic,” said retired Army Gen. Mark Milley at an Axios event Thursday launching the publication’s Future of Defense newsletter.

He noted these robots could be commanded and controlled by AI systems."

Possibilities and ethical issues of entrusting nursing tasks to robots and artificial intelligence; Sage Journals, June 12, 2023

Tomohide Ibuki, Ai Ibuki, and Eisuke Nakazawa, Sage Journals; Possibilities and ethical issues of entrusting nursing tasks to robots and artificial intelligence

"Abstract

In recent years, research in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) has made rapid progress. It is expected that robots and AI will play a part in the field of nursing and their role might broaden in the future. However, there are areas of nursing practice that cannot or should not be entrusted to robots and AI, because nursing is a highly humane practice, and therefore, there would, perhaps, be some practices that should not be replicated by robots or AI. Therefore, this paper focuses on several ethical concepts (advocacy, accountability, cooperation, and caring) that are considered important in nursing practice, and examines whether it is possible to implement these ethical concepts in robots and AI by analyzing the concepts and the current state of robotics and AI technology. Advocacy: Among the components of advocacy, safeguarding and apprising can be more easily implemented, while elements that require emotional communication with patients, such as valuing and mediating, are difficult to implement. Accountability: Robotic nurses with explainable AI have a certain level of accountability. However, the concept of explanation has problems of infinite regression and attribution of responsibility. Cooperation: If robot nurses are recognized as members of a community, they require the same cooperation as human nurses. Caring: More difficulties are expected in care-receiving than in caregiving. However, the concept of caring itself is ambiguous and should be explored further. Accordingly, our analysis suggests that, although some difficulties can be expected in each of these concepts, it cannot be said that it is impossible to implement them in robots and AI. However, even if it were possible to implement these functions in the future, further study is needed to determine whether such robots or AI should be used for nursing care. In such discussions, it will be necessary to involve not only ethicists and nurses but also an array of society members."

Robo-dogs and therapy bots: Artificial intelligence goes cuddly; CBS News, January 3, 2022

 LUCY CRAFT, CBS News; Robo-dogs and therapy bots: Artificial intelligence goes cuddly

"Frazzled adults aren't the only Japanese turning to robots. At Moriyama Kindergarten in the central Japanese city of Nagoya, robots are replacing the traditional class guinea pig or bunny. Teachers told CBS News that the bots reduce anxiety and teach kids to be more humane...

"We can be attached to various types of devices and objects," said Robillard, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia. "Some people have given names to their robot vacuums … Some people feel strongly about their cars or about their wedding bands."

Evidence supports the use of social robots, she said, in areas like imparting social skills to children with autism, or teaching exercises to rehab patients – offering instruction without judgment.

But in other areas, it's unclear how well social robots really work, she said. "What we can say from the science right now is that robots have a huge amount of potential.""

Roboethics: The Human Ethics Applied to Robots; Interesting Engineering, September 22, 2019

Susan Fourtané , Interesting Engineering; Roboethics: The Human Ethics Applied to Robots 

Who or what is going to be held responsible when or if an autonomous system malfunctions or harms humans?
"On ethics and roboethics 

Ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies human conduct, moral assessments, the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. The concept of roboethics brings up a fundamental ethical reflection that is related to particular issues and moral dilemmas generated by the development of robotic applications. 

Roboethics --also called machine ethics-- deals with the code of conduct that robotic designer engineers must implement in the Artificial Intelligence of a robot. Through this kind of artificial ethics, roboticists must guarantee that autonomous systems are going to be able to exhibit ethically acceptable behavior in situations where robots or any other autonomous systems such as autonomous vehicles interact with humans.

Ethical issues are going to continue to be on the rise as long as more advanced robotics come into the picture. In The Ethical Landscape of Robotics (PDF) by Pawel Lichocki et al., published by IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, the researchers list various ethical issues emerging in two sets of robotic applications: Service robots and lethal robots."

Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous; Philosophers Win €17.9 Million Grant for Study of the Ethics of Disruptive Technologies

"A project on the ethics of socially disruptive technologies, led by Philip Brey, professor of philosophy of technology at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente and scientific director of the 4TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, has received a €17.9 million (approximately $19.6 million) grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science’s Gravitation program.

The other researchers involved in the 10-year project are Ibo van de Poel (TU Delft), Ingrid Robeyns (Utrecht University), Sabine Roeser (TU Delft), Peter-Paul Verbeek (University of Twente), and Wijnand IJsselsteijn (TU Eindhoven).

Socially disruptive technologies include artificial intelligence, robotics, nanomedicine, molecular biology, neurotechnology, and climate technology, among other things. A press release from the University of Twente describes what the researchers will be working on:

They will be developing new methods needed not only to better understand the development and implementation of the new generation of disruptive technologies, but also to evaluate them from a moral perspective and to intervene in the way technology continues to develop. This includes the development of an approach to ethical and philosophical aspects of a disruptive technology that is widely applicable. Another important aspect of the program is the cooperation between ethicists, philosophers and technical scientists aimed at finding better methods for responsible and sustainable innovation. One objective of the programme is to innovate ethics and philosophy in the broadest sense by researching how classical ethical values and philosophical concepts are being challenged by modern technology."

What are the ethics of human-robot relationships?; Guardian, 1/27/14

Eleanor Robertson, Guardian; What are the ethics of human-robot relationships? :

"A few years ago, the Danish Council of Ethics released a report that tried to engage with some of these questions, and I wish I could go back in time and hand Jonze a copy before he sat down to write Her. One of the Council's concerns is social robots, which are designed to seem as though they have inner lives. These emotional simulations encourage us to treat their artificial feelings as real, potentially leading to "relationships", in which humans instrumentalise objects with very convincing similarities to real people.

Films that involve artificial intelligence should invite us to think about those intuitions, rather than using robots as a lazy novelty. Her could have been a chance to get stuck in to this stuff, but you'd probably get more intellectual depth from watching a few episodes of The Jetsons."