Mathematics
Cafe Scientifique: Roboethics for humans
Start date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:00:00 BST
Finish date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:00:00 BST
Tuesday, 25 October, 2011
8-10 pm
Le Café Parisien, 1 Lord Montgomery Way, Portsmouth, PO1 2AH
Roboethics for humans
Where is robotics going? is a question that receives a great deal of attention. The reason for this owes much to the fictional roots of robotics and the fact that robots have a significant place in our cultural imagination. Thus roboticists find themselves having to address fears and fascinations that often have little to do with the reality of robotics. Like any transformative technology, intelligent robotics has the potential for huge benefit, but is not without risk. Seventy years ago Asimov created his fictional laws of robotics. I believe it is now time for a revision but, as I will argue in my introduction, it makes no sense to talk about how present-day or near-future robots can be ethical. I will, however, offer for discussion a new ethical code for roboticists.
Alan Winfield is Hewlett-Packard Professor of Electronic Engineering and Director of the Science Communication Unit at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He conducts research in swarm robotics in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and is especially interested in robots as working models of life, evolution, intelligence and culture. Alan is passionate about communicating science and technology. He holds an EPSRC Senior Media Fellowship with the theme Intelligent Robots in Science and Society, and blogs about robots, open science and related topics at http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/
Further Information
Participation is free and open to all. No booking is necessary.