Human rights in the midst of intelligent humanoid robots’ rise : the good, the bad, and the uncertain

Abstract

The recent progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has inspired a remarkable transformation in Intelligent Humanoid Robots (IHRs). These human replicas are purposefully designed to mimic human appearance and actions. As they interact with individuals, they might pose great potential positive and negative impacts on their human rights, e.g., the right to privacy and non-discrimination. In this thesis I explore the relevant ethical and human rights issues in the context of IHRs, which the AI and human rights literature has not yet adequately addressed. I argue that the aesthetics, presence in private spaces, and the perception of IHRs by individuals as animate beings, pose threats and afford opportunities for human rights and ethical values, particularly privacy as broadly understood. Furthermore, I argue that, as a distinct AI and robotic technology, IHRs have the potential to exploit human vulnerabilities for, e.g., the elderly and individuals with physical and mental disabilities, thus, they deserve a particular attention from the human rights scholarship. As a representative case, I pay particular attention to elderly care robots. I contribute to the AI and human rights literature in 3 interrelated ways: 1) I create a classification of privacy to provide a comprehensive understanding of how privacy is impacted by IHRs. This classification includes elements such as informational, physical, mental, and social privacy, among others. 2) I conduct qualitative interviews with leading technologists, roboticists, and AI experts to gain insight into the present and potential trajectory of IHRs. The findings of these interviews reveal the following issues: 1) growing concerns about the urgency to understand the ramifications of AI/IHRs on human rights, particularly the right to privacy, 2) human-centric AI was considered as an appropriate approach to supervise the development of IHRs/AI, and 3) regulating AI/IHRs was preferred by most of the interviewees. 3) Based on this analysis, I propose a “Human Rights-Centred Approach,” which I consider as a unifying universal approach to design and deploy human rights-respecting IHRs. I suggest that: 1) human rights can inform use the challenges and opportunities raised by IHRs, and 2) incorporating human rights in the process of design and developing IHRs should be of essential importance.