Robot Autonomy vs. Human Autonomy: Social Robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Nature of Autonomy

Abstract

Social robots are robots that can interact socially with humans. As social robots and the artificial intelligence (AI) that powers them becomes more advanced, they will likely take on more social and work roles. This has many important ethical implications. In this paper, we focus on one of the most central of these, the impacts that social robots can have on human autonomy. We argue that, due to their physical presence and social capacities, there is a strong potential for social robots to enhance human autonomy as well as several ways they can inhibit and disrespect it. We argue that social robots could improve human autonomy by helping us to achieve more valuable ends, make more authentic choices, and improve our autonomy competencies. We also argue that social robots have the potential to harm human autonomy by instead leading us to achieve fewer valuable ends ourselves, make less authentic choices, decrease our autonomy competencies, make our autonomy more vulnerable, and disrespect our autonomy. Whether the impacts of social robots on human autonomy are positive or negative overall will depend on the design, regulation, and use we make of social robots in the future.

A principlist-based study of the ethical design and acceptability of artificial social agents

“…ASAs can improve the autonomy of humans by supporting them to achieve more valuable ends, make more authentic choices, or improve their competencies. On the other hand, our autonomy can be impaired when ASAs restrict us from achieving valuable ends, making authentic choices, and developing competencies, as well as when they disrespect our agency (Formosa, 2021). In three of our autonomy aligned sub-scenarios (1D, 2C, and 4E), the ASAs are negatively impacting human autonomy by restricting authentic choice, disrespecting user agency, and increasing the vulnerability of the user's autonomy.…”

“…What we find in these scenarios is that human autonomy is negatively impacted by the ASA. However, as argued by Formosa (2021), in a given situation social robots and ASAs have the ability to either boost or inhibit human autonomy. ASAs can improve the autonomy of humans by supporting them to achieve more valuable ends, make more authentic choices, or improve their competencies.…”

“…While ethical issues have previously been identified with ASAs, such as whether dialogue systems should be used to change humans' goals or actions (Allwood et al, 2000), and some theoretical work exists exploring significant ethical implications of ASAs, such as their impacts on human autonomy (Formosa, 2021), there have been few studies designed to investigate what ASA behaviours are seen as ethically acceptable. One exception is an early study by van Vugt et al (2009) that explored ASA ethics from the perspective of trustworthiness, reporting that participants found the obese embodied agent who provided weight loss advice more trustworthy, which lends support to a body of work that uses ASAs to challenge stereotypes and biases (Bickmore et al, 2021;Rossen et al, 2008;Sebastian and Richards, 2017;Vugt et al, 2010).…”

From Pluralistic Normative Principles to Autonomous-Agent Rules

“…Social robotic agents demonstrate a degree of sociability and emotional perception, by, inter alia, their engagement in high-level interactive dialogue, responsiveness to social cues, gesturing, mimicking human social behaviour, and voice recognition (Darling, 2016;Formosa, 2021). This serves not only to facilitate the human-robot interface but also to promote their self-maintenance, learning, and decision-making capacity (Breazeal, 2003).…”

“…Such agents can potentially (and paradoxically) serve to either enhance or diminish human well-being. They can allow users to achieve more valuable ends and make more authentic choices or can serve to diminish authentic human choice (Formosa, 2021).…”