Who is responsible?

Visual from FRR website poll

In my last post,I focused on the question, "What does 'responsible robotics' mean to you?" The answers presented were from seven members of the Foundation of Responsible Robotics (FRR). Taking into account those answers, as well as the input from students, the next step could be having students consider specific situations.

On the website of the FRR there is a "poll" in which participants decide who or what is responsible for the error made.

FRR home page: http://responsiblerobotics.org/

Take the FRR poll: https://responsiblerobotics.org/frr-polls/

Two different situations are shown; each has 3 pictures, cartoon-strip style (see visual above). The reader must choose who/what is responsible from 5 possibilities. It isn't possible to choose more than one  (e.g., shared responsibility). After a choice is made, the cumulative results of choices are shown.

An activity for speaking or writing could be to have students - alone or in pairs - relate each situation in words, based on the pictures shown.

And, of course, they could each decide which choice they would make and give a short explanation of that choice. This would promote a lot of discussion if students disagree about who or what is responsible in each case.

Here are the two situations:

Example 1:  The 3 pictures show the owner of a self-driving car at a repair shop. The car is repaired, and then when the driver is back on the road, he has an accident. Who/what is responsible:

• Self-driving car
• Self-driving car manufacturer
• Person in car
• Repair shop workers
• Repair shop

After the choice is made (only one choice is possible), the screen indicates the percentage of people who have chosen each one. Of course, these numbers change as other readers take the poll and choose differently. Check the link to take the survey to find out which options were chosen most.

Example 2:  The 3 pictures show a male and female worker in an auto factory with a robotic assembly line. They are drinking alcohol. The second picture shows the female worker sleeping (passed out?) at the control panel, while the male colleague (also apparently drunk) is having an accident with an industrial robot. In the third picture they are at the hospital, and the male worker has serious injuries. Who/what is responsible (with percentages on the day I made my choices):

• Robot (1.85%)
• Female worker (39.35%)
• Male worker (22.22%)
• Robot manufacturer (9.49%)
• Factory/employer (27.08%)

It is interesting to me that the male worker is considered to be less responsible than both his colleague and his employer, even though he must have known that he shouldn't be drinking on the job. Also, considering that his colleague was not conscious at the time of his accident, why did the majority consider her the most responsible of the list? Would the answers have been different if the workers were both male or both female, or if the genders were reversed?

At a recent meeting with my colleagues, I presented the poll to them and made note of the results. The activity generated a lot of animated discussion, and a lot of disagreement about who was responsible in each situation. It was interesting to hear their explanations of their choices, since it gave me further understanding of how different students might interpret the situations.

• The first thing that became clear is that people interpret the information in the pictures differently. This, of course, would have an impact on what they think is happening and therefore who is responsible for what happened.

• The second thing is that everyone was limited in their decision by the lack of further information. There was a lot of "it depends...". For example, in the first situation, it is not known whether the need for repair was due to a fault by the car manufacturer or whether the repair shop workers did not repair the car well. This can be used to an advantage in the classroom, however, if students have to relate which further information they would need in order to make a decision.

I plan to have my robotics students take the survey to see how their choices compare with the results - and how they compare with my English-teacher colleagues. I'll also have my engineering students in other fields take the survey to see if students who are not studying robotics would answer differently from robotics engineers.

Some possible further activities:

• Explain in words what is happening in the 3 pictures (speaking or writing).
• Prepare this explanation for 2 different audiences (e.g., a formal memo to the boss about what happened; an informal email to a friend/colleague).
• Class 'debate' in five groups; each group supports one of the choices.
• Negotiation role play; teacher prepares role play cards. For example, for the first situation: self-driving car manufacturer; repair shop owner; repair shop workers; robotics ethicist; consumer action group representative; etc.

At the end of the explanation after the survey, it is stated, "We hope to add many more questions to this survey," so it will be interesting to keep checking this website.

If readers of this blog post take the survey, or have their students take it, I would be interested to know what the majority choose, and how you react to those choices. Please upload your comments below.

What is 'responsible robotics'?

The website of the Foundation of Responsible Robotics has a variety of material that is useful for lessons - and not only for robotics engineering students. The FRR's focus is on robotics, but their philosophy and mission are relevant for other areas of technology and engineering as well.

From the What We Do section:

"Mission: To promote the responsible design, development, implementation, and policy of robots embedded in our society. Our goal is to influence the future development and application of robotics such that it embeds the standards, methods, principles, capabilities, and policy points, as they relate to the responsible design and deployment of robotic systems.

We see both the definition of responsible robotics and the means for achieving it as on-going tasks that will evolve alongside the technology of robotics. Of great significance is that the FRR aims to be proactive and assistive to the robotic industry in a way that allows for the ethical, legal, and societal issues to be incorporated into design, development, and policy."

The link: http://responsiblerobotics.org/

Of particular interest to me (since I am teaching a humanities subject to engineers) is the emphasis on the joint input from non-engineering fields.

From the Who We Are section (in part):

"The FRR is the only foundation dedicated to responsible robotics that relies heavily on the humanities to work together with robot designers and developers. We are a not-for-profit foundation established in Twente, the Netherlands. The FRR is comprised of ethicists, philosophers, legal scholars, roboticists, journalists, scientists, companies and others interested in investing in our goals." [my emphasis]

In the About Us section is the area "Responsible Robotics." Seven members of the FRR answer the question, "What does 'responsible robotics' mean to you?" (in a video) in less than 50 seconds each (except for one speaker who speaks for 1 minute, 28 seconds). There are a variety of accents that include American, British, Italian and German.

Before listening, students could first consider how they would answer the question. Students in engineering disciplines other than robotics could also answer the question - or adapt it to their own field (e.g., what does 'responsible information technology' mean to you?). They could then compare their answers with those given. Many of these answers could also refer to the concept of 'responsibility' in other fields of engineering.

Since it's spoken (spontaneously?), it's not always perfect - grammar, repetitions, etc. So these are good examples of 'real' speech (i.e., not from films or from professional presenters) for students' listening practice.

The following is my own transcript (after listening to the answers many times!), so if there are any errors, it's my fault. The speakers are not identified on the FRR website, but for each speaker there is a link to youtube.com, and there I found each speaker's name and affiliation. The number in parentheses before each name is the length of time of the speaking.

FRR members answering the question, "What does 'responsible robotics' mean to you?"

1. (0.28)  Mark Coeckelbergh, Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the University of Vienna.  RR means to me that you don't think about the ethics of technology afterwards, when the technology is already there, but you think about it beforehand. And you make sure that the designers, engineers, scientists, that they're aware of the ethical issues at the time when they're actually developing the technology.
2. (0:27)  Amanda Sharkey, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the University of Sheffield.  Well, for me RR means looking into the benefits and the risks of robotics. So trying to anticipate what the risks might be so that we can avoid them. But also making sure that we don't miss out on the benefits.
3. (1:28)  David Gunkel, an American academic and Presidential Teaching Professor of Communication Studies at Northern Illinois University.  So RR to me means the following: I would take the word "responsible" and sort of break it up into its two components, which is "response" and "able." So when I think of RR I think of something that is responsible in that it can have the ability to respond to us and we in turn can have the ability to respond to it. And so responsibleness is not just about being accountable for something, but it's about being able to be social and about being able to take a certain kind of stance with regards to the sociality and your involvement in the sociality. And so we're looking now at a future and even a present where our machines are becoming more and more responsive. And they are listening to us, they are taking commands from us and they are doing things that we didn't anticipate them doing in the past. So, for example, the Tay AI, which was created by Microsoft, that was a responsible robot in that it was able to respond, but it had some difficulties with the assignment of responsibility because of the sort of racist tweets that it had circulated on the internet. So there is a difference there that I think is important that you actually hear in the word "responsible" that I think we have to mobilize and begin to think about in much more creative ways and much more critical ways.
4. (0:37)  Filippo Santoni de Sio, Assistant Professor in Ethics of Technology at TU Delft.  RR to me means robotics that keeps human values into account (sic). So traditionally robotics has been seen as a technical enterprise focusing on the efficiency and the technical quality of the artifacts. We think that robotics should promote also values like justice, responsibility, inclusion, privacy and whatnot. And this is particularly important in an age in which robotics is accelerating in a significant way.
5. (0:40)  Wendy Ju, Executive Director at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University and Assistant Professor of Information Science at Cornell Tech.  For me RR is really about thinking about all the different aspects of human culture and human life and taking that into account when we're designing a robot. So that the robot ... we're not constantly accommodating the technology, but technology is accommodating us and supporting us. And I think that's difficult to do because people, just are people ... you know, people are really different and we operate differently in all these different circumstances and there's all these interesting aspects of culture and behavior that need to be taken into account for (sic).
6. (0:44)  John Sullins, Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University.  RR means to me the responsible design, use and deployment of robotics technologies in the various ways that they're going to be entering into society in the next generation, as things are going to really be changing and we need to really think through exactly how we're going to utilize these technologies and deploy these technologies and have them disrupt the things we want disrupted and keep safe the things that we want to preserve about our society.
7. (0:44)  Shannon Vallor, Professor of Philosophy of Technology at Santa Clara University, as well as president of the Society for Philosophy of Technology.  RR means to me a certain kind of practice, a way of thinking about robotics in which it's not about so much what we build, but what we're doing when we build robots, when we design them, when we think about who we're designing them for. So I think RR is about being responsible to others, being responsible for others through the practice of robotic design and engineering that seeks to develop technologies that can actually enrich human lives. 

After listening to the speakers (and/or after reading the transcript), students could prepare a short explanation of their answer to the question - and present it impromptu to the class. This would give rise to further discussion about the different 'meanings,' including their response to each speaker's comment. What do most answers have in common? Which answer(s) are different from the others. Do the answers reflect in some way the speaker's position or place of work?

For students who will one day be engineers, it is extremely important that they develop a clear idea of what 'responsibility' means to them.

Which engineering degree?

In my last post, The travelling engineer, I suggested that the topic of engineering travel destinations would be good for discussion at the beginning of an academic semester that follows the summer holiday. A recent article I read provides a good topic of discussion for the beginning of semester - specifically, engineering students' first semester in their field of study. Why did they choose to study engineering, and how did they choose which particular field of engineering to enter? The article, Which Engineering Degree Should You Choose?, is on the website "Interesting Engineering."

The link: http://www.interestingtechnology.net/which-engineering-degree-choose/

The introduction states, "The key to success in engineering is figuring out which degree path suits you best and which one will eventually lead you into a sustainable career." Presumably, students considered this when deciding which engineering degree they wanted to pursue. Incidentally, it would be interesting to have them explain what they think is meant here by a "sustainable" career (since the word has a number of meanings and connotations).

The article then gives a brief description (one paragraph) of 6 engineering fields:

• biomedical engineering
• chemical engineering
• civil engineering
• electrical engineering
• manufacturing engineering
• mechanical engineering

The descriptions generally include an explanation of what the field involves, the various industries it works in or with, examples of what engineers in this field do, and some positive aspects of the work.

For engineering students who are beginning to study in one of these six fields, they could discuss such questions as:

• Why did they choose their particular discipline?
• Do they agree with the description of their field in this article?
• What would they change or add to this description?

Students who have chosen a field different from the six mentioned could write a short paragraph about their engineering field that follows the pattern of those in the article. Focus on:

• Common fields this type of engineer works in;
• Description of what the discipline does or how it's used in the real world;
• Some examples of what engineers in this discipline do;
• Positive aspects of this discipline in particular.

To focus students on the correct use of verb tenses in their descriptions, they can notice the tenses used in the descriptions in the article. Mostly the present tense is used (to explain what is true about each field), but there is also the use of will to refer to the future (what students will be able to do as engineers). But there are also other phrases used that refer to the future. For example:

• This degree path could involve
• If you decide to choose
• If you want to
• ... you could always choose
• ... is forecasted to be
• ... you could end up working in
• ... where you can see yourself working for the rest of your life

The few uses of other tenses provide a contrast to the two tenses already mentioned.

• You will likely be working inside of a lab
•  Chemical engineering has seen huge growth
• ... electrical engineering is fast paced and is constantly innovating
• ... a manufacturing engineer likely had something to do with it
• While the manufacturing industry in many places has hurt in recent years
• ... students feeling like they haven't focused in on anything
• ... if you haven't made it that far

In the students' discussions or writing, it would be particularly empowering for them to notice the comment in the article's introduction:

"Each specialty of engineering cumulatively contributes to nearly every aspect of our physical world."

That thought should certainly assure them that they have made the best decision for themselves.