Assessing the Japanese Turn in AI and Robot Ethics: Extracting Meaningful Principles Between Exoticism and Empiricism in the Case of AIBO

Citation

Galanos V & Reisel M (2020) Assessing the Japanese Turn in AI and Robot Ethics: Extracting Meaningful Principles Between Exoticism and Empiricism in the Case of AIBO. In: Springer International Publishing, pp. 141-157. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62803-1_12

Abstract
The present paper critically examines a recent recurrent pattern of Western scholarship of importing sets of Japanese ethics in artificial intelligence/data/robot ethics contexts without a deeper examination of their meaning and value. The paper’s outline is unfolded as such: (1) We draw on material stemming from an ethnographic participant-observer study that followed a debate between Western and Japanese people confronting the robotic AI pet AIBO. (2) We demarcate how many of the proposed Japanese values are practically relevant to the examination of human-robot interaction and how this feeds into existing questions about privacy and safety, in the context of a global overwhelming AI hype and narrative bias. (3) Finally, we discuss how a long history of Western enthusiasm and occasional misunderstandings of Japanese values comes full circle with the recent trend, and we conclude with a set of open questions that require more dedicated empirical research in order to reach more proper and practical value system in the future design of technology.

People

Dr Vassilis Galanos

Lecturer in Digital Work, Management, Work and Organisation