Call: “I”Robot? Rethinking the I-You Relation through Dialogical Philosophy in the Ethics of AI and Robotics (AI ...

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Call: “I”Robot? Rethinking the I-You Relation through Dialogical Philosophy in the Ethics of AI and Robotics (AI & Society special issue)

February 25, 2015


Call for Papers: Special Issue AI & Society
http://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/146
(2015) Editor (Kathleen Richardson)
“I”Robot? Rethinking the I-You relation through dialogical philosophy in the Ethics of AI and Robotics

ABSTRACTS accepted now – end of March

This Special Issue: “I”Robot? Rethinking the I-You relation through dialogical philosophy in the Ethics of AI and Robotics will address issues in dialogical philosophy (Buber), concerning the nature of “I” and “You” and the relatedness between them (Buber, Stawarska, Bakhtin, Husserl, Derrida). AI robotic scientists develop embodied agents (robots) with a (potential) viewpoint to interact with humans. We will explore what kinds of “I” models of consciousness are shaping robots. Contemporary studies in developmental psychology/psychotherapy (e.g., attachment theory and development theory), philosophy (Stawarska) and other fields are challenging the detached “I” model of subjectivity. However, the dialogical model does not propose fusion of the “I” with the “You” or a ‘Cyborg’ (Haraway) model of human-machine integration but relationship between the “I” and “You” mediated by dialogue, experience, presence and mutuality.

The Special Issue will explore if AI Robotics is excessively reliant on egocentric models of a disembodied “I” (e.g., Theory of Mind, “I” consciousness) coming into relation with another disembodied “I” as the “You” and other “She/He/It, We, You, They’. Nor does the dialogical model propose a ‘merged consciousness’ of the I-You, or I-Other (human, animal, machine, environment). To what extent can dialogical phenomenology offer new directions for considering subjectivity and a move away from the Cartesian “I” (I think therefore I am) attached to the pronoun “I”, as lone entity to reflect on human consciousness and subjectivity? (Stawarska 2009).

This special issue will draw on the ground breaking work of Martin Buber’s dialogical phenomenology of I and Thou (1937) to explore I-You and I-It. We encourage authors to submit papers on the ethics of AI and Robotics by reference to the dialogical tradition. Moreover, dialogical philosophy provides a unique framework for reflecting on the role of speech and silence, listening and talking, presence and absence, embodiment and disembodiment in radically new ways. All these themes that have significant bearing on the ways robots are developed, imagined and become part of lived human existence.

SCHEDULE

Now – end of March – ABSTRACT
April – Final list of contributors
July – Full Paper
Aug-Oct -Review Period
Oct –Dec Review updates

For more information:

Dr. Kathleen Richardson
Senior Research Fellow in the Ethics of Robotics
Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility
De Montfort University
Leicester, UK
kathleen.richardson@dmu.ac.uk




Managing Editor: Matthew Lombard

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