Abstract
This paper addresses ethical challenges posed by a robot acting as both a general type of system and a discrete, particular machine. Using the philosophical distinction between “type” and “token,” we locate type-token ambiguity within a larger field of indefinite robotic identity, which can include networked systems or multiple bodies under a single control system. The paper explores three specific areas where the type-token tension might affect human–robot interaction, including how a robot demonstrates the highly personalized recounting of information, how a robot makes moral appeals and justifies its decisions, and how the possible need for replacement of a particular robot shapes its ongoing role (including how its programming could transfer to a new body platform). We also consider how a robot might regard itself as a replaceable token of a general robotic type and take extraordinary actions on that basis. For human–robot interaction robotic type-token identity is not an ontological problem that has a single solution, but a range of possible interactions that responsible design must take into account, given how people stand to gain and lose from the shifting identities social robots will present.
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Notes
Note that we specifically refrain from engaging in the ongoing philosophical debate as to whether robots can or could be truly moral agents; all we intend here is the interactant’s construal of the robot as norm-following or moral.
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Arnold, T., Scheutz, M. HRI ethics and type-token ambiguity: what kind of robotic identity is most responsible?. Ethics Inf Technol 22, 357–366 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9485-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9485-1