Paper short abstract:

COVID-19 presents a grave danger to humanity. The deployment of AI and robotic devices might increase not only to support disease detection and diagnosis but also to assist with holistic care, healing practices, and social interactions to supplement the lack of contact during social distancing.

Paper long abstract:

Human society was not prepared for the COVID-19 outbreak, which has revealed vulnerabilities a globalized world faces regarding anthropogenic climate change and pandemics. While pandemics have been constant companions of biological life, as the world progresses further into the Anthropocene, multispecies pandemics might become increasingly common. Reassessing that there are reasons to believe that pandemics will occur more frequently, and that robots might play an important role during pandemics, is even more pressing, as increased population density and anthropogenic climate change are bound to increase contact between the anthroposphere and the virosphere. While the dangers of anthropogenic climate change have become clearer for most of us, COVID-19 presents an equivalent grave danger to humanity. Considering these circumstances, the deployment of AI and robotic devices might increase not only to support disease detection and diagnosis but also to assist with holistic care, healing practices, and social interactions to supplement the lack of contact during extended periods of social distancing. This concerns the realm of care and society at large.

Globally, exposure to social robots varies significantly. Japan is currently at the forefront of creating and using social robots for companionship, therapy, and care work. However, despite the Japanese government’s enthusiasm for robotic solutions, introducing social robots into the realm of care remains highly contentious. As such, we must actively address how digital technologies can improve our lives—remaining aware that if we are not careful, they have the potential to limit our capacity to maintain autonomous human relationships.

Paper short abstract:

Starting from our experience with culture-aware robotics, the article introduces the concept of a "diversity-aware robot", i.e., an embodied AI that takes into account the unique characteristics of the person it is interacting with to be more easily accepted and provide them with better services.

Paper long abstract:

In the last five years, the project CARESSES introduced the new concept of transcultural robotic nursing. According to this new paradigm, Socially Assistive Robots shall not only be capable of performing useful services (e.g., to provide access to technology, foster social participation, engage people in activities, reduce loneliness, etc.), but also be "culture-aware" and take into account the cultural context and the background of the person they are interacting with. To this end, the robot's Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be designed in order to avoid stereotypical representation of people: the AI must be informed by our a priori knowledge about cultures but also be able to acquire information about individual characteristics during the interaction.

The article discusses how culture-aware robotics can be expanded through the concept of a "diversity-aware robot", i.e., an embodied AI that takes into account the unique characteristics of the person it is interacting with to be more easily accepted and provide them with better services. Examples related to research in different areas (including our own) are shown, ranging from "generative models" capable of producing images or gestures that are more likely to have a positive impact on people depending on what we know about their tastes to solutions for affective interaction capable to guess people's emotions and use this information to ensure them a more rewarding experience.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in robotics and therapeutic interventions in autism, this talk will examine the way in which roboticists and AI researchers draw on models of mental health when designing machines for autism therapy.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in robotics and therapeutic interventions in autism, this talk will examine the way in which roboticists and AI researchers draw on models of mental health when designing machines for autism therapy. These models tell us about the connections between mechanical thinking in psychiatric paradigms and their portability to robotics and AI, demonstrating that they appear to work – but they are mimicking property relations (Richardson 2023) rather than human relations. In this I refer to machines as ‘the parts which are not changed irrespective of what is added to or taken from them’ as a framework for resisting robotics and AI to understand human relations, and argue that, ethically speaking, we should put the brakes on these interventions in favour of humanistic approaches to healthcare.

Paper short abstract:

This papers discusses ongoing work on the development of competencies and educational resources for nurses in healthcare, including with the use of technologies. Referring specifically to post-Covid spirituality needs, these developments will more aptly support nurses to respond to patients’ spiritual needs in the hospital setting.

Paper long abstract:

Historically there has be a close relationship between the nursing services and spiritual care provision to patients, arising due to the evolvement of many hospitals and nursing programmes from faith-based institutions and religious order nursing. With increasing secularism, these relationships are less entwined. None the less, as nurses typically encounter patients at critical life events, such as receiving bad news or dying, nurses frequently understand the need and requirement for both spiritual support and religious for patients and families during these times. Yet there are uncertainties, and nurses can feel ill-equipped to deal with patients’ spiritual needs. Secularity appears to indicate a lack of importance of religious and spiritual beliefs and yet repeated studies show that nurses find that patients and families have spiritual needs that require support. Globally nurses report that they provide spiritual care, and indeed, it is found generally that attending to both spiritual and/or religious needs, through the provision of pastoral care, can have a positive impact on health outcomes. However, challenges exist, as little education or preparation is provided to these nurses, including in relation to the increasing use of more and more advanced technologies. Moreover, they may have uncertainty around their role and may be unclear as to what interaction they should have with Pastoral Care Services or Healthcare Chaplaincy, especially if they lack the required competencies to understand the need for assessment or referral. The development of this confidence and the required competencies is important, especially so with increasingly multicultural societies with diverse spiritual and religious needs, and as COVID-19 has shown, with the growing use of advanced technologies.

Paper short abstract:

Advances in neurotechnology and AI enable a symbiotic cognitive integration called the "hybrid mind". This paper explores the notion of hybrid mind, identifies its unique ontological features, and outlines ethical questions arising from this unprecedented blending of human brain-minds and machines.

Paper long abstract:

Concurrent advances in neurotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) allow for an increasingly tight integration of the human brain and mind with artificial cognitive systems, blending humans with computing technologies, hence creating a symbiotic integration which I call the "hybrid mind". Although the mind has always been a hybrid faculty, emerging from the interaction of biology, culture (including technological artefacts) and the natural environment, the bidirectional flow of information between human brains and computers is now capable of generating an unprecedented degree of mutual adaptation between the two, hence a symbiotic relationship between human personhood and artificial agency. These technological developments generate critical philosophical and anthropological challenges. These challenges include doubts about the effects of this human-machine integration on the user’s self-perception, awareness and the subjective experience of their own mental contents. Furthermore, this class of human-machine interactions blurs the boundaries of the human mind-body synolon (in the Aristotelian sense), on the one hand, and the computer hardware and software that are functionally integrated with such synolon. The ontological indeterminacy introduced by this dynamic also raises normative ethical questions, such as whether functionally integrated computer technologies should be viewed as parts of the person or as separate artefacts, hence subject to different legal treatment. This paper will explore the notion of "hybrid mind", identify its unique ontological features, and outline the most pressing normative ethical questions arising from this emerging symbiotic relationship between human brain-minds and machines.