Challenging the Neo-Anthropocentric Relational Approach to Robot Rights

Abstract

When will it make sense to consider robots candidates for moral standing? Major disagreements exist between those who find that question important and those who do not, and also between those united in their willingness to pursue the question. I narrow in on the approach to robot rights called relationalism, and ask: if we provide robots moral standing based on how humans relate to them, are we moving past human chauvinism, or are we merely putting a new dress on it? The background for the article is the clash between those who argue that robot rights are possible and those who see a fight for robot rights as ludicrous, unthinkable, or just outright harmful and disruptive for humans. The latter group are by some branded human chauvinists and anthropocentric, and they are criticized and portrayed as backward, unjust, and ignorant of history. Relationalism, in contrast, purportedly opens the door for considering robot rights and moving past anthropocentrism. However, I argue that relationalism is, quite to the contrary, a form of neo-anthropocentrism that recenters human beings and their unique ontological properties, perceptions, and values. I do so by raising three objections: 1) relationalism centers human values and perspectives, 2) it is indirectly a type of properties-based approach, and 3) edge cases reveal potentially absurd implications in practice.

Scaffolding Human Champions: AI as a More Competent Other

“…While I will not discuss machine agency and anthropomorphism here, it is interesting to note how modern AI inspires such perceptions and descriptions, as it relates to its motivational scaffolding functions. This is also important for understanding how AI can be construed as other even by those, like me, who believe that AI systems are severely limited when it comes to abilities of being meaningful social partners capable or reciprocal relationships (Saetra, 2020(Saetra, , 2021. For the sake of the current discussion, it might be sufficient that learners experience these systems are meaningful others, and this finds support in the relational turn in the field of robot ethics (Coeckelbergh, 2010;Gerdes, 2016;Gunkel, 2018).…”

Can nurses in clinical practice ascribe responsibility to intelligent robots?

“…Although errors arise from the robot itself, it could also be the user or others involved in its use. 5 Although robots' rights are often considered and at first sight as non-anthropocentric, 28 it is understood that human beings are allocated with stewardship roles to the rest of the environment and all other creations, thus highlighting the need to be watchful of non-humans such as intelligent robots and artificial intelligence when applied in the healthcare system by nurses in clinical practice. In this argument, robotics application should be applied with the expectations that the human actors will bear all liabilities and accountabilities related to robotic or technological failures in general.…”

“…Ethical biocentrism is an approach where entities are assumed as the origins of value and entirely detached from their instrumental value including how humans imagine their value. 28 Humans are sidelined by way of endowing technology with autonomous ability. Thus, responsibility is relieved on the part of individuals; providing an excuse for oneself and others to reject responsibility.…”

“…Ethical biocentrism is an approach where entities are assumed as the origins of value and entirely detached from their instrumental value including how humans imagine their value. 28…”

Anthropomorphizing Technology: A Conceptual Review of Anthropomorphism Research and How it Relates to Children’s Engagements with Digital Voice Assistants

“…On the other hand, the consequences of anthropomorphism in human-technology engagements have prompted researchers to evaluate the ethical risks of endowing technology with humanlike design components (Złotowski et al, 2015;de Graaf, 2016;Saetra, 2020Saetra, , 2021aSaetra, , 2021b. At their core, such ethical criticisms, sometimes referred to as the 'forensic problem of anthropomorphism' (Złotowski et al, 2015), consider the creation of humanlike technology as a form of deception, because they 'trick' humans, especially children, into overestimating the technology's 'true' capacities (Sharkey & Sharkey, 2010), or into engaging with the technology in ways which are supposed to be reserved for genuine human-human engagements (Saetra, 2020).…”