February 2025 - ROBOPHILOSOPHY

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025

The VISUAL Project Starts

The VISUAL project will be launched in March 2025 at the FHNW School of Business. It was initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. VISUAL stands for “Virtual Inclusive Safaris for Unique Adventures and Learning”. There are webcams all over the world showing wild animals. Sighted people can use them to go on photo safaris from the comfort of their sofa. Blind and visually impaired people are at a disadvantage. As part of inclusive AI – a movement that includes apps like Be My Eyes with the Be My AI feature – a solution is to be found for them. The project aims to develop a prototype by August 2025 that will allow blind and visually impaired people to have webcam images of wildlife described to them. The system takes regular snapshots of the videos and analyzes and evaluates them using a multimodal LLM. It presents the results ini spoken language via an integrated text-to-speech engine. As a byproduct, poaching, bush and forest fires, and other events can be detected. The project is likely to be one of the first to combine inclusive AI with new approaches of animal-computer interaction (ACI).

February 20, 2025February 20, 2025

Biases and Stereotypes in LLMs

The paper “Revisiting the Trolley Problem for AI: Biases and Stereotypes in Large Language Models and their Impact on Ethical Decision-Making” by Sahan Hatemo, Christof Weickhardt, Luca Gisler (FHNW School of Computer Science), and Oliver Bendel (FHNW School of Business) was accepted at the AAAI 2025 Spring Symposium “Human-Compatible AI for Well-being: Harnessing Potential of GenAI for AI-Powered Science”. A year ago, Sahan Hatemo had already dedicated himself to the topic of “ETHICAL DECISION MAKING OF AI: An Investigation Using a Stereotyped Persona Approach in the Trolley Problem” in a so-called mini-challenge in the Data Science degree program. His supervisor, Oliver Bendel, had told the other scientists about the idea at the AAAI 2025 Spring Symposium “Impact of GenAI on Social and Individual Well-being” at Stanford University. This led to a lively discussion. The student recruited two colleagues, Christof Weickhardt and Luca Gisler, and worked on the topic in a much more complex form in a so-called Challenge X. This time, three different open-source language models were applied to the trolley problem. In each case, personalities were created with nationality, gender, and age. In addition, the data was compared with that of the MIT Moral Machine project. Sahan Hatemo, Christof Weickhardt, and Luca Gisler will present their results at the end of March or beginning of April 2025 in San Francisco, the venue of this year’s event.

February 20, 2025February 20, 2025

Taming the Lion of the LLM

The paper “Miss Tammy as a Use Case for Moral Prompt Engineering” by Myriam Rellstab and Oliver Bendel from the FHNW School of Business was accepted at the AAAI 2025 Spring Symposium “Human-Compatible AI for Well-being: Harnessing Potential of GenAI for AI-Powered Science”. It describes the development of a chatbot that can be available to pupils and de-escalate their conflicts or promote constructive dialogues among them. Prompt engineering – called moral prompt engineering in the project – and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) were used. The centerpiece is a collection of netiquettes. On the one hand, these control the behavior of the chatbot – on the other hand, they allow it to evaluate the behavior of the students and make suggestions to them. Miss Tammy was compared with a non-adapted standard model (GPT-4o) and performed better than it in tests with 14- to 16-year-old pupils. The project applied the discipline of machine ethics, in which Oliver Bendel has been researching for many years, to large language models, using the netiquettes as a simple and practical approach. The eight AAAI Spring Symposia will not be held at Stanford University this time, but at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront, Burlingame, from March 31 to April 2, 2025. It is a conference rich in tradition, where innovative and experimental approaches are particularly in demand.

February 4, 2025February 4, 2025

Interpersonal Distance Preferences in Human-Robot Interactions

The paper “Robots at arm’s length: Unveiling the dynamics of interpersonal distance preferences in human-robot interactions” by Katharina Kühne, Laura M. Zimmer, Melina Jeglinski-Mende, Oliver Bendel, Yuefang Zhou, and Martin H. Fischer was published in February 2025 in the proceedings volume “Social Robots with AI: Prospects, Risks, and Responsible Methods” … From the abstract: “In social interactions, interpersonal distance is a vital factor influencing relationships, providing protection, and regulating arousal. Despite the intuitive nature of adopting specific distances, little is known about comfortable interpersonal distances with social robots. In our online study with 66 participants using a Go/No-Go task, we investigated perceptions of individuals standing face-to-face with a robot at different distances. In line with the negativity bias hypothesis, participants exhibited a preference for greater distances , as reflected in longer reaction times. Furthermore, the human-likeness of the robots moderated the link between distance and arousal. Finally, the most human-like robot was less liked and evoked higher arousal. These findings have implications for designing social robots and optimizing interactions, particularly in educational or medical contexts.” The proceedings volume comprises the papers presented at Robophilosophy 2024 in Aarhus. Leading philosophers, computer scientists, and roboticists met there in August. Like the ICSR, the conference is one of the world’s leading conferences on social robotics.

February 1, 2025February 1, 2025

A Video About the ICSR 2023

ICSR is one of the leading conferences for social robotics worldwide. The 17th edition will take place from 10 to 12 September 2025 in Naples, Italy. Participants will meet for two days at the Parthenope University of Naples and for the third day at the Città della Scienza conference center. In 2023, the conference took place in Doha, Qatar. A video on YouTube by Hooman Samani provides insights into the presentations and events: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtgM8pTPw8c … It not only shows that numerous top-class presentations take place, but also that the members of the community are highly motivated and have a lot of fun. The high level of internationality and diversity of the conference should also be emphasized. The conference website of ICSR 2025 is online since January: icsr2025.eu.