Week 4: Robotics, bionic technologies and the challenge to embodiment

Question 1

What is the real ethical task for new technologies?

Answer 1

The safety of human lifes (safety protocols etc

Question 2

What kind of AI systems are considered a threat?

Answer 2

Artificial intelligence systems with unacceptable risk are those considered a threat to people and, as a result, will be banned.
They include: cognitive behavioral manipulation of people or specific vulnerable groups (for example, voice-activated toys that encourage dangerous behavior in children); social categorization (classifying people based on behavior, socioeconomic status, or personal characteristics); biometric identification and categorization of people; real-time and remote biometric identification systems, such as facial recognition.

Question 3

How does MP think about embodiment?

Answer 3

Embodiment: being-in-the-world through our body
It is a requirement

Question 4

How does Nancy think about the body?

Answer 4

Flesh skin: ex-peausitum, ?????

Question 5

How does Derrida think about embodiment?

Answer 5

We can’t live in a world without touching

Question 6

What does it mean to not stop at a defensive ethics and instead use an ethics of wonder?

Answer 6

This means that we should not focus only on the important task of considering how new technologies may affect the security of human beings. We should also consider the broader philosophical questions that an inquiry into the ethics of emerging technologies raises.

Question 7

What question does the technological development of hypersensitive, life-like or living robotic skin pose?

Answer 7

The technological development of hypersensitive, life-like or living robotic skin poses the question of what it means to feel and have a skin. Skin is not just an organ that covers us, it presents an important part of the outward representation of our self.

Question 8

What do geminoid robots offer?

Answer 8

Geminoid robots offer a third technological innovation that allows us to examine what it means to be human.

Question 9

What do radiomics and nanobots change?

Answer 9

Radiomics and nanobots also change the way we relate to the human body by presenting it as a carrier of data to be analysed.

Question 10

(Bottenberg) What is the strongest affinity revealed in the 3 interviews with bina48?

Answer 10

The strongest affinity revealed in the 3 interviews with Bina48 is the way breakdowns in communication are handled  all interviewers approach their communication with Bina48 with forgiving attitudes

Question 11

(Bottenberg) What does B propose as the real question being tested by the Turing test?

Answer 11

Bottenberg proposes that the real question being tested by the Turing test isn’t ‘how can we gauge machine intelligence’ but instead ‘how do we respond to a machine that acts as if it were conscious?’

Question 12

(Bottenberg) What is the ELIZA effect?

Answer 12

we are remarkably drawn to find a relatable conversationalist in the simples AI —> the ELIZA effect is the psychological term used to describe this phenomenon, it captures the “susceptibility of people to read far more understanding than is warranted into strings of symbols – especially words – strung together by computers”

Question 13

What does Bottenberg argue?

Answer 13

Bottenberg argues that people want to feel recognised and are therefore sensitive to technology that seems able to recognise us by directing its gaze at us.

Question 14

(Romanska) What is the historical view of the human body?

Answer 14

has maintained a strictly defined visual integrity. Anything not shaped as ‘human’ was typically deemed monstrous (from hybrid mythological creatures to severely disabled ‘elephant men’).

Disabled people were seen as ‘sub-human’

Question 15

(Romanska) In what way has the perception of what disabled bodies can and should do changed because of technological progress?

Answer 15

not only do the newest prosthetics often look as ‘unhuman’ as possible, but their capacities put into question the capacities and limits of the non-disabled body.

Question 16

(Romanska) What is the main proposal of the article?

Answer 16

the paper proposes critical posthuman disability studies as a new analytical paradigm for recontextualization and exploration of the new modes od being in the Age of Tech

Question 17

(Romanska) What does bionic mean?

Answer 17

denotes a specific combination of robotics, AI, and neuroscience that allows 2-way electric communication between the human brain and prosthetics

Question 18

(Romanska) What does posthuman refer to?

Answer 18

The notion of the ‘posthuman’ refers to the philosophical and technological disruption of the historical paradigm, prompting a re-evaluation of established categories, not only those of the ‘human’ but also, most importantly, the ‘subhuman’  this re-evaluation, in turn, has led to a broader questioning of fundamental concepts such as human rights, life, and death

Question 19

(Romanska) What new epistemology does posthumanism offer?

Answer 19

Posthumanism offers a new epistemology that isn’t anthropocentric and therefore not centred in Cartesian dualism. It seeks to undermine the traditional boundaries between the human, the animal, and the technological

Question 20

(Romanska) How does the posthuman view think of the body?

Answer 20

The posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born (Hayles)

Question 21

(Romanska) Which two groups are there ethically concerning modern technology?

Answer 21

Transhumanst (Nick Bostrom) who believe in unlimited access to enhancement technologies

Bioconservatives (e.g. Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy Rifkin, and Bill McKibben), who advocate globally coordinated banning or limiting of such technologies

They have 2 fears of unregulated human enhancement:
 The concept itself is degrading (lacks human dignity)
 The posthuman might imperil ordinary (non-cyber-enhanced) humans (class differences  money, money, money)

Question 22

What does Romanska state?

Answer 22

Romanska contends that recent developments in prosthetics challenge our ideas of what it means to be human.

Historically, disabled persons were often seen as less human and those who were cast as less human were often depicted as less able.

In recent years, prosthetics no longer seeks to mimic the non-disabled body and ‘restore’ the functions of the non-disabled human body but moves towards disrupting the classical visual integrity of the human body and enhancing its capacities, challenging what it means to have a (dis)abled human body.