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- Convenors:
-
Giulia De Togni
(The University of Edinburgh)
James Wright (The Alan Turing Institute)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Yulia Frumer
(Johns Hopkins University)
Selma Šabanović (Indiana University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The Japanese government is vying to lead the world in the development and governance of AI, which it views as a key technology for transforming the future of public and personal health and care. This panel investigates gaps between hype and reality as these aspirations begin to be put into practice.
Long Abstract:
Discourses around the future potential and imagined impacts of AI are reaching new heights of aspiration globally. In particular, Japan - with the world’s most rapidly ageing society - published a major national AI Strategy in 2019. The document is imbued with a rhetoric of AI ‘saving’ the country from current and future societal crises that has long characterised national policy around techno-science (Šabanović 2014; Frumer 2018; Robertson 2018; Wright 2019). Similar rhetoric is also found in South Korea, China, Singapore, and Taiwan, which have published a flurry of national AI strategy documents since 2017. This panel critically examines how AI and related technologies such as socially assistive robots and the internet of things are imagined or expected to transform futures of health and social care in these countries, and how key actors in the government, industry, and third sector propose that they be governed. Focusing on cases from East Asia, we invite a critical discussion drawing on the following questions:
- What forms of AI and related technologies, such as robotics, are actually being developed and deployed in health and care?
- How does the aspirational rhetoric of AI connect with realities of use?
- How are the ethics and governance of AI systems being conceptualised, drawn up into guidelines and principles, and operationalised?
- Where is the “human” in “human-centric AI”? And who or what does a “human-centric AI” exclude?
Presenting: Anne Stefanie Aronsson; Chihyung Jeon; Heesun Shin; Seonsam Na; Eunjeong Ma; Tsujimura Mayuko; Naonori Kodate.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the recent development of policy relating to AI in healthcare as well as the ethical principles proposed to govern it, based on analysis of key documents and semi-structured interviews with several of the architects of Japan’s AI policies and ethical frameworks.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past decade, the Japanese government has released a series of guidelines and policy documents setting out positions on the ethics and governance of AI, culminating in the 2019 publication of the “Social Principles of Human-Centric AI” and a new national AI Strategy. Much of the government’s technology strategy has focused on applications of AI and related technologies in the sectors of health and social care, as a key pillar of its overarching plan to build “Society 5.0”, described as a “human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space”.
This paper examines the recent development of policy relating to AI in healthcare as well as the ethical principles proposed to govern it, based on analysis of key documents and semi-structured interviews with several of the architects of Japan’s AI policies and ethical frameworks. It explores how new sociotechnical imaginaries of the future of post-COVID healthcare are being constructed, and how these imaginaries relate to the related development of ethical principles and proposals for the international governance of AI.
Paper short abstract:
How may our identities and care relationships be affected by the use of care robots? How may this vary in different cultural contexts? How might our understandings of the role and value of human care influence the development of care robots? And how might these in turn be influenced?
Paper long abstract:
“Socially Assistive Robots” (SARs) may have the potential to ‘care’ for humans in particular through social interactions, physical assistance and therapy delivery (Chita-Tegmark and Scheutz 2020). Turkle (2007) describes SARs as “relational artifacts,” sociable machines equipped with computational systems designed to create a conduit for “emotional touch” with humans by actively facilitating smooth communication. Some researchers posit that “socially-embodied robots” (Ziemke 2001) have the potential to fulfil users’ psychological and emotional needs, including interaction, communication, companionship, care for others and attachment (Kolling et al. 2016).
Some also note that SARs may become key in providing care during a pandemic like the one we are experiencing (Forman et al. 2020). These ‘caring machines’ have a wide range of applications including providing social, emotional and cognitive as well as physical rehabilitation, encouraging healthier life-styles, reminding people to take their medications, delivering tele-medicine support and providing companionship to residents of care homes to reduce feelings of loneliness (Kidd and Breazeal 2007; Lara et al. 2017; Pineau et al. 2003; Robinson et al. 2014; Wada and Shibata 2007).
This paper explores in what ways our identities and care relationships may be affected by the use of SARs and how this may vary in different cultural contexts, focusing in particular on Japan and the UK. It discusses how might our understandings of the role and value of human care influence the development of SARs and how might the latter in turn be influenced, as ‘caring machines’ come into our world.
Paper short abstract:
The Japanese government is working on developing robotic care solutions to overcome the labor shortage. This article discusses professional women in Japan and their burden of caring for aging relatives, and how introducing robotic care devices might reduce current anxieties regarding eldercare.
Paper long abstract:
The elder population in Japan is increasing drastically, causing a number of issues that have not yet been encountered by Western countries. Demographic data from Japan reveal that the Japanese have the longest lifespan globally, resulting in the country having the world’s highest population of elderly people. At the same time, the country has a rapidly declining birth rate. As the population is aging, the workforce is shrinking and leaving a high number of elders with fewer caregivers to look after them. At present, the Japanese government is working on the development of robotic care solutions to overcome the labor shortage in eldercare, implementing a new agenda to increasingly introduce social robots to assist in the field. This article discusses professional women in Japan and their burden of caring for aging relatives, and how introducing robotic care devices might reduce current anxieties regarding the provision of eldercare. It analyzes the eldercare strategies of 12 white-collar professional women in their forties and fifties, and examines the extent to which gendered, expected at-home caregiving affects their professional commitments and associated anxieties. The findings are expected to provide crucial insight into the most effective strategies that can be used by Japanese women to balance their careers with responsibilities to care for elderly relatives, particularly when it is impossible to predict the intensity of caregiving in the future.
Paper short abstract:
The paper, which is based on ethnographic research in Japan, suggests that aspirations for a future of machine-driven care are unwarranted given the human intervention required for care robots to function successfully in the present.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores emerging ontologies of the robotic based on ethnographic research among care professionals in Japan. For years, leaders in government and business in Japan have suggested that advanced robotics technologies will help maintain standards of care for the elderly and disabled in the face of a decreasing pool of care workers. This paper finds, to the contrary, that even the most sophisticated robotics technologies rarely perform in actual care sites without sustained and significant human intervention. The paper suggests further that newer robotic care devices reflect recognition of these technological limits, in effect sacrificing operational autonomy and an abundance of features in favor of real-world functionality. The paper concludes with a consideration of how these devices unsettle both conventional understandings of the robotic and aspirations for an even more automated future of care.