IB Digital Society 3.7D Dilemmas in Robots and Autonomous Technologies Notes

3.7D Dilemmas in Robots and Autonomous Technologies

What Makes Robots a Dilemma

1. Robots raise dilemmas software does not because they act in the physical world: sharing our roads, homes, and workplaces, their choices help or harm real people directly.
2. Benefits and risks come paired. A care robot eases loneliness while cutting human contact. The tension recurs elsewhere: self-driving cars promise fewer crashes but muddy who is to blame, and warehouse robots raise output as jobs disappear.
3. Four recurring dilemmas: anthropomorphism and the uncanny valley, complexity of human-environment interaction, uneven governance, and displacement of humans, best read through values and ethics (who gains, who bears the cost).

Anthropomorphism and the Uncanny Valley

1. Anthropomorphism is our habit of reading feelings and intentions into machines, growing stronger the more lifelike a robot becomes.
2. When a robot looks almost but not quite human, people feel unease, the uncanny valley; designers choose machine-like, cartoonish, or convincingly human, each with different effects.
   1. Example: Paro, a robotic baby seal in elderly care, is soft and responsive so users bond with it and comfort it as if alive.
3. The deeper dilemma is trust: anthropomorphism can make people over-trust a machine, confiding in it or believing it understands them, misleading them about capability and responsibility.
4. Stakeholders differ: a lonely user gains comfort, a provider gains a tool, but critics warn bonding with a machine can replace human contact and mislead the vulnerable. Contested: whether designed companionship is kind or deceptive (values and ethics).