Mind the gap: responsible robotics and the problem of responsibility
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Mind the gap: responsible robotics and the problem of responsibility David J. Gunkel1
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017
Abstract The task of this essay is to respond to the question concerning robots and responsibility—to answer for the way that we understand, debate, and decide who or what is able to answer for decisions and actions undertaken by increasingly interactive, autonomous, and sociable mechanisms. The analysis proceeds through three steps or movements. (1) It begins by critically examining the instrumental theory of technology, which determines the way one typically deals with and responds to the question of responsibility when it involves technology. (2) It then considers three instances where recent innovations in robotics challenge this standard operating procedure by opening gaps in the usual way of assigning responsibility. The innovations considered in this section include: autonomous technology, machine learning, and social robots. (3) The essay concludes by evaluating the three different responses—instrumentalism 2.0, machine ethics, and hybrid responsibility—that have been made in face of these difficulties in an effort to map out the opportunities and challenges of and for responsible robotics. Keywords Robot · Robotics · Ethics · Machine ethics · Technology · Responsibility · Philosophy
Introduction However it comes to be defined and characterized, “responsible robotics” is about responsibility of and for emerging * David J. Gunkel [email protected] http://gunkelweb.com 1
Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL 60115, USA
technology. But “the concept of responsibility,” as Riceour (2007, p.11) pointed out in his eponymously titled essay, is anything but clear and well-defined. Although the classical juridical usage of the term, which dates back to the nineteenth century, seems rather well-established—with “responsibility” characterized in terms of both civil and penal obligations (either the obligation to compensate for harms or the obligation to submit to punishment)—the philosophical concept is confused and somewhat vague. In the first place, we are surprised that a term with such a firm sense on the juridical plane should be of such recent origin and not really well established within the philosophical tradition. Next, the current proliferation and dispersion of uses of this term is puzzling, especially because they go well beyond the limits established for its juridical use. The adjective ‘responsible’ can complement a wide variety of things: you are responsible for the consequences of your acts, but also responsible for others’ actions to the extent that they were done under your charge or care…In these diffuse uses the reference to obligation has not disappeared, it has become the obligation to fulfill certain duties, to assume certain burdens, to carry out certain commitments (Riceour 2007, pp. 11–12). Riceour (2007, p. 12) traces this sense of the word through its etymology (hence the subtitle to the essay “A Semantic Analysis”) to “the polysemia
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