Robots and Ethics in the Digital Age

Since the middle of the 20th century, robots have found their way into more and more areas of human life. From industry and its first robot Unimate over military and warfare to service, care, medicine and household, robots are used either today or in the foreseeable future.

The moral questions raised in the construction and use of robots are the subject of the philosophical discipline of robot ethics. Because with robots as specific technologies, the values implemented in them and the (social) consequences resulting from them, moral questions always go hand in hand. In a first part, this lecture gives a critical overview of some fields of robotics and the ethical questions that arise here. In a second step, the fields of work of the philosophical discipline of robotics ethics will be presented, before what has been said is concluded with practical implications and a plea.

Starts Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 09:00

Dr. Janina Loh (née Sombetzki) is university assistant (Post-Doc) in the field of philosophy of technology and media at the University of Vienna. She studied at the Humboldt University Berlin and wrote her dissertation (2009-2013) on the issue of responsibility – Verantwortung als Begriff, Fähigkeit, Aufgabe. Eine Drei-Ebenen-Analyse (Springer 2014). After a post-doc position at the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel (2013-2016), Janina Loh is now (since April 2016) in Vienna. She just published the first German Introduction to Trans- and Posthumanism (Junius 2018) and is about to publish an Introduction to Robot Ethics in German language (Suhrkamp 2019). She habilitates on the Critical-Posthumanist Elements in Hannah Arendt’s Thinking and Work (working title). Janina Loh’s main research interests lie in the field of trans- and posthumanism (especially critical posthumanism), robot ethics, feminist philosophy of technology, responsibility research, Hannah Arendt, theories of judgement, and ethics in the sciences.