Joao Sequeira

The introduction of new tools has always had an impact on the economy and ultimately on society, changing the relations of production, the work settings and peer interaction, often determining new routines, new lifestyles, new ways of living. According to [1, 2] the deployment of artificial intelligent systems (either embodied or non-embodied), in the 21st century, has introduced a fundamental twofold ontological shift with deep anthropological consequences: (i) tools have lost their inherent purely instrumental status and have suddenly become potentially autonomous entities capable of agency, (ii) environments, on the other hand, have acquired a hybrid nature, where the analogic and the digital merge and where the physical and the virtual converge, where natural intelligence and autonomous artificial systems cohabit in a fusion that blurs the lines between the physical, the digital and the biological. That ontological shift brings about the most profound change in the paradigm defined by the typical human relationship with tools favoring, in contexts that are exclusively profit-driven, the emergence of work conditions that are highly disrespectful of human dignity. The present paper addresses the misuse of AI technology at the workplace from a particular case study, highlighting how deeply this misuse can affect human beings’ well-being and dignity and calling for the urge of a widespread assessment of algorithm design and its deployment within a human rights framework.

Human historical narrative with its distinct economic, social and cultural phases is also a scientific and technological evolutionary narrative in which accumulated knowledge, know-how and innovation constitute the means required to answer specific economic and social challenges and the needs of people at different times.New technologies impact on individuals, societies and on the natural environment, often not in an innocuous way. It is, consequently, fundamental that these technological developments are accompanied and monitored in dedicated forums conceived not to hinder that development but contribute to its beneficial deployment by eliminating or at least mitigating potential negative impacts.The present paper addresses the motivation leading to the International Conference on Robot Ethics and Standards in October 2015, in Lisbon. Behind this motivation were the challenges posed by the European project Monarch, a project dedicated to social robotics operating in real environments that highlighted the Ethics research deficit and the urge to create a forum to discuss the safety and ethical standards for the development of intelligent technologies.

As the number of robots interacting with people grows, it seems natural that some adjustments occur within societies. Though the extent of such adjustments is unclear, the current media frenzy on the effects of technology in societies, with a special emphasis in social robotics, is driving research to account for unexpected scenarios. The adjustments may include changes in the formations of social hierarchies, in which humans must take orders from robots, naturally triggering fears of dominance and convergence to societies operating under new Ethics. The paper adopts a dynamic systems view of social environments identifying stability with social order. The introduction of robots in social environments is likely to change some equilibrium that can be identified with social order. Under relaxed assumptions societies can be represented by networks of non-smooth systems. The paper thesis is that by integrating a robot in a social environment in small steps stability is preserved and hence also the social order. Disturbing social hierarchies may indeed lead to a different equilibrium, that is, to a new social order.