Ageing in Europe comes more rapidly than many realize: In about 10 years, one fifth of the population will be 65+ with a further increase of 70% in the next 25 years. At the same time, healthcare is under extreme pressure due to budget cuts, limited resources and personnel together with increased demands. Robots may fulfill important tasks in this respect. Our research focuses on social robots to support tasks requiring interpersonal communication. Many moral concerns and objections are raised, however, in particular among care professionals. To examine the issue, we report on 1) a qualitative study among professional caregivers and 2) a documentary portraying healthy elderly meeting with Hanson’s Robokind “Alice”. Alice is under development in our lab, supplying her with abilities for emotional responses. The results show that the moral concerns are not in line with the benefits that the social robots appear to have for the lonely elderly. Our conclusion posits that new robot technology may not dehumanize care but rather may bring humanness back into professional health care. In C. Verdier, M. Bienkiewicz, A. Fred, H. Gamboa, & D. Elias (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF) Jan. 12-15, 2015. Lisbon, Portugal (pp. 648-653). Lisbon, PT: SCITEPRESS:
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From the article: Using Roger Crisp’s arguments for well-being as the ultimate source of moral reasoning, this paper argues that there are no ultimate, non-derivative reasons to program robots with moral concepts such as moral obligation, morally wrong or morally right. Although these moral concepts should not be used to program robots, they are not to be abandoned by humans since there are still reasons to keep using them, namely: as an assessment of the agent, to take a stand or to motivate and reinforce behaviour. Because robots are completely rational agents they don’t need these additional motivations, they can suffice with a concept of what promotes well-being. How a robot knows which action promotes well-being to the greatest degree is still up for debate, but a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches seem to be the best way. The final publication is available at IOS Press through http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-708-5-184
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In this article, the main question is whether and, if so, to what extent online journalism raises new moral issues and, if any, what kind of answers are preferable. Or do questions merely appear new, since they are really old ones in an electronic wrapping, old wine in new bottles? And how does journalism deal with the moral aspects of online journalism? The phenomenon of the Internet emerged in our society a few years ago. Since then, a large number of Dutch people have gone online, and the World Wide Web is now an integral part of our range of means of communication. Dutch journalism is online too, although certainly not in the lead. More and more journalists use the Internet as a source, especially for background information. Newspapers have their web sites, where the online version of the printed paper can be read. And that is it for the time being. There are no more far-reaching developments at present, certainly not on a large scale. Real online journalism is rather scarce in the Netherlands. The debate concerning the moral aspects of online journalism is mainly being conducted in the United States. First of all, by way of introduction, I will present an outline of online journalism. The first instance is the online version of the newspaper. Here, only to a certain degree new issues come up for discussion, since the reputation of reliability and accuracy of the papers, in spite of all criticism, also applies to their online versions. Besides, especially in the United States and increasingly in European countries as well, there is the so-called dotcom journalism, the e-zines, the online news sites without any relationship with printed newspapers. This may be the reason why these sites do not have a strong commitment to moral standards, at least as they have developed in the journalistic culture of the newspapers. After having outlined the moral issues arising in online journalism, the question will be addressed whether and, if so, to what extent it is meaningful and desirable to develop instruments of self-regulation for this new phenomenon of journalism.
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De robotassistent is een nieuwe, veelbelovende technologie om docenten in het primair onderwijs te ondersteunen en leerprestaties te verbeteren. In dit onderzoek ontwikkelen we een morele theorie voor het inzetten van deze robotassistenten in het onderwijs.Doel Met dit onderzoek ontwikkelen we een theorie over het moreel verantwoord inzetten van robotassistenten in het onderwijs, waarbij kwalitatieve en kwantitatieve data wordt gecombineerd. Resultaten Dit onderzoek loopt. Hieronder vind je een overzicht van de resultaten tot nu toe. Smakman, M. (2019) De robotdocent komt eraan, maar hoe? AG Connect. Januari/ Februari 2019. pp 70-73 Smakman, M., & Konijn, E. (2019). Robot Tutors: Welcome or Ethically Questionable? In M. Merdan, W. Lepuschitz, G. Koppensteiner, R. Balogh, & D. Obdržálek (Eds.), Robotics in Education ‐ Current Research and Innovations. Vienna, Austria: Springer. [in press] Smakman, M. and Konijn, E.A. (2019-02-07) Onderwijsrobots: van harte welkom of ethisch onverantwoord? Presented at Robots en AI in het onderwijs. Den Haag, The Netherlands. Smakman, M. And Konijn, E.A. (2019-01-31) Moral challenges and opportunities for educational robots Presented at Workshop How do we work with educational robots? De Waag, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Goudzwaard, M., Smakman, M., Konijn, E.A. Robots are Good for Profit: A Business Perspective on Robots in Education. [accepted] to 9th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics Smakman, M., Konijn, E.A. (2019, February) Moral Considerations Regarding Robots in Education: A Systematic Literature Review. Paper presented at Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap, 7-8 February 2019. Nijmegen, The Netherlands Smakman, M., Konijn. E.A. (2018, December) Considerations on moral values regarding robot tutors. Presented at the Symposium on Robots for Language Learning. 12-13 December 2018. Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey Smakman, M. (2018, February). Moral concerns regarding robot tutors, a review.Poster presented at the ATEE 2018 Winter Conference – Technology and Innovative Learning, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Looptijd 01 januari 2017 - 01 januari 2022 Aanpak Dit onderzoek maakt gebruik van de Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology. VSD is een methode om rekening te houden met morele waarden tijdens het ontwerpen en inzetten van technologie. Eerst richt dit onderzoek op het benoemen van relevante (morele) waarden. Door verschillende focusgroepen met onder meer ouders, leraren, overheid en robotbouwers, worden de waarden verder uitgewerkt. Vervolgens wegen we de waarden door ze voor te leggen aan diverse groepen. Daarna stellen we richtlijnen op hoe robots op een verantwoorde manier kunnen worden ingezet.
