IAS-FRIS Symposium on Social Robots and Ethical Design

Toward Design-centered Governance for Social Robots

​​​The aim of this symposium is to discuss the use of AI ethics standardizations for robot governance. Specifically, the symposium considers challenges to the regulation of AI-enabled technology due to slow legislative processes which have not been able to keep pace with the rapid speed of technological advances. In addition to considering the regulation of critical AI technologies, it also argues for a regulatory framework which relies on non-binding and flexible AI ethics standards to ensure that stakeholders manage ethical, legal, and social implication (ELSI) risks that are inherent in daily human-robot interactions. By including AI ethics standards into the development process for social robots, robot developers will be able to include principles of responsible innovation and research without conflicting with ‘hard laws’ enacted for robot regulation. Plus, we will explore the approach of ethical robot design, examine its potential and limitations, and demonstrate the utility of ‘ethically aligned design’ and ‘social system design’ frameworks in implementing the concept of "compliance by design".