One of the world’s most important conferences for robot philosophy (aka robophilosophy) and social robotics, ROBOPHILOSOPHY, took place from 18 to 21 August 2020, not in Aarhus (Denmark) as originally planned, but – due to the COVID 19 pandemic – in virtual form. Organizers and presenters were Marco Nørskov and Johanna Seibt. A considerable number of the lectures were devoted to machine ethics, such as “Moral Machines” (Aleksandra Kornienko), “Permissibility-Under-a-Description Reasoning for Deontological Robots” (Felix Lindner) and “The Morality Menu Project” (Oliver Bendel). The keynotes were given by Selma Šabanović (Indiana University Bloomington), Robert Sparrow (Monash University), Shannon Vallor (The University of Edinburgh), Alan Winfield (University of the West of England), Aimee van Wynsberghe (Delft University of Technology) and John Danaher (National University of Ireland). In his outstanding presentation, Winfield was sceptical about moral machines, whereupon Bendel made it clear in the discussion that they are useful in some areas and dangerous in others, and emphasized the importance of machine ethics for the study of machine and human morality, a point with which Winfield again agreed. The last conference was held in Vienna in 2018. Keynote speakers at that time included Hiroshi Ishiguro, Joanna Bryson and Oliver Bendel. The next ROBOPHILOSOPHY will probably take place in 2022 at the University of Helsinki, as the organisers announced at the end of the event.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
