Abstract
Social robots are robots that can interact socially with humans. As social robots and the artificial intelligence (AI) that powers them becomes more advanced, they will likely take on more social and work roles. This has many important ethical implications. In this paper, we focus on one of the most central of these, the impacts that social robots can have on human autonomy. We argue that, due to their physical presence and social capacities, there is a strong potential for social robots to enhance human autonomy as well as several ways they can inhibit and disrespect it. We argue that social robots could improve human autonomy by helping us to achieve more valuable ends, make more authentic choices, and improve our autonomy competencies. We also argue that social robots have the potential to harm human autonomy by instead leading us to achieve fewer valuable ends ourselves, make less authentic choices, decrease our autonomy competencies, make our autonomy more vulnerable, and disrespect our autonomy. Whether the impacts of social robots on human autonomy are positive or negative overall will depend on the design, regulation, and use we make of social robots in the future.
Highlights
Social robots are robots that can appear to express and perceive human emotions and can communicate with us using “high-level dialogue and natural cues”, such as gaze and gestures (Fosch-Villaronga et al, 2020, p. 441)
We show that whether the impacts of social robots are positive or negative overall for human autonomy will depend on the design, regulation, and use that we make of social robots in the future
Given the lack at present or in the near future of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that is, artificial intelligence (AI) that matches human-level performance across all relevant human abilities (Walsh et al, 2019, p. 16), we focus here only on social robots powered by Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), that is, AI that is specialised to work only in specific areas (Gurkaynak et al, 2016)
Summary
Social robots are robots that can appear to express and perceive human emotions and can communicate with us using “high-level dialogue and natural cues”, such as gaze and gestures (Fosch-Villaronga et al, 2020, p. 441). We identify five ways that social robots could harm our autonomy through leading to humans having: (1) fewer valuable ends; (2) worse autonomy competencies; (3) less authentic choices; (4) greater autonomy vulnerability; and (5) their autonomy disrespected. While this list is not intended to be exhaustive, it is illustrative as it brings together for the first time a systematic analysis of the most important impacts of social robots on human autonomy. We show that whether the impacts of social robots are positive or negative overall for human autonomy will depend on the design, regulation, and use that we make of social robots in the future
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