Jennifer Robertson (University of Michigan), Robot Rights vs. Human Rights: Forecasts from Japan

 

 

Monday, May 27th, at 18:00 PM

Gilman Building, Hall 449

Chair: Yossef Schwartz

 

Japanese robotics has been ahead of the curve in pursuing embodied intelligence and building humanoid robots, and Japan represents the vanguard of the robotization of social institutions. As the population continues to shrink and age fast, the Japanese are banking on the robotics industry to reinvigorate the economy and to preserve the country’s alleged ethnic homogeneity. There is growing support for conferring the rights of citizenship on robots. Since Japan has had a problematic record on human rights, the possibility of robots acquiring civil status before flesh-and-blood humans raises profound questions regarding the nature of agency, citizenship, coexistence, and the very concept and definition of humanness. What does this forecast about new approaches to and configurations of civil society and attendant rights in other high-tech societies?