The proliferation of robots in everyday life inevitably raises issues related to ethics. This is also the theme of the conference s proposed June 20 by the next Forum for Science, Research and Society. Jean-Christophe Baillie, founder Gostai and speaker at the meeting, the issue is particularly important to address it is still unclear. “To understand these issues of ethics, we must first identify precisely the term robot,” says he. For some, it may include items such as cars and smart homes. But for the specialist in robotics, in the case of ethics, it concerns the learning machine, whose knowledge and thus changing the behavior in contact with other elements: human, another robot … By this learning, robot moves away from data originally built by the engineer who built it, to behave not provided.

A definition of the robot

“This is a new category of objects of different types of consumer electronics,” says he. The question of ethics applied to robots thus decomposes into two parts: one part of human ethics, linked to the builder, the engineer and the user want to do, like n ‘How important subject. And secondly ethics of the robot itself, or the choices he makes before acting, and therefore the decision it takes, when it is able to take. “But today, for some years, only human ethics is topical: we do not yet create robots capable of learning in general” continues founder Gostai. “We did manage to do that on simple tasks.” Arises when, for the future, the issue of liability. If a robot learner causes injury, who is responsible? While the robot is a machine running, the problem remains a classic.

Human ethics and ethical robotics

As in an auto accident, the manufacturer is not responsible for the fact that the driver of the vehicle. But if the robot is capable of learning, “this is an issue that is more of an issue of education, like the responsibility of parents when their child’s offense. And Jean-Christophe Baillie discuss the field of developmental robotics, which is modeled the evolution of a child. “What is interesting is that researchers in this industry address the problem of learning actions and representations of the world”. And Jean-Christophe Baillie concluding: “it is difficult to discuss what does not exist yet. In two decades, humans may be increased and directly integrate robotics into the body. In this case, it would be more appropriate to contrast human and robot, and ethical debates become more complicated.