Tag: Stanford University

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Achieving Wellbeing AI

The AAAI 2022 Spring Symposium “How Fair is Fair? Achieving Wellbeing AI” will be held March 21-23 at Stanford University. The symposium website states: “What are the ultimate outcomes of artificial intelligence? AI has the incredible potential to improve the quality of human life, but it also presents unintended risks and harms to society. The goal of this symposium is (1) to combine perspectives from the humanities and social sciences with technical approaches to AI and (2) to explore new metrics of success for wellbeing AI, in contrast to ‚productive AI‘, which prioritizes economic incentives and values.” (Website “How Fair is Fair”) After two years of pandemics, the AAAI Spring Symposia are once again being held in part locally. However, several organizers have opted to hold them online. “How fair is fair” is a hybrid event. On site speakers include Takashi Kido, Oliver Bendel, Robert Reynolds, Stelios Boulitsakis-Logothetis, and Thomas Goolsby.  The complete program is available via sites.google.com/view/hfif-aaai-2022/program.

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Unimals are Among Us

Agrim Gupta, Fei-Fei Li and other scientists from Stanford University use so-called unimals “to explore two questions that often get overlooked in AI research: how intelligence is tied to the way bodies are laid out, and how abilities can be developed through evolution as well as learned” (MIT Technology Review, 19 October 2021). MIT Technology Review quotes Josh Bongard from University of Vermont as saying: “This work is an important step in a decades-long attempt to better understand the body-brain relationship in robots” (MIT Technology Review, 19 October 2021). The research seems like a continuation of the embodiment movement, which the Swiss Rolf Pfeifer played a major role in shaping. And indeed, Bongard says: “Embodiment is our only hope of making machines that are both smart and safe.” (MIT Technology Review, 19 October 2021) The unimals look a bit like figures from the cycle “Bizzarie di varie figure” by Giovanni Battista Braccelli. The drawings from the year 1624 show embodiments of cubes, wires, and machine parts. However, they are static, while the unimals move and constantly change their bodies – the title of the article in the magazine reads accordingly: “These weird virtual creatures evolve their bodies to solve problems” …

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AI and Society

The AAAI Spring Symposia at Stanford University are among the community’s most important get-togethers. The years 2016, 2017, and 2018 were memorable highlights for machine ethics, robot ethics, ethics by design, and AI ethics, with the symposia “Ethical and Moral Considerations in Non-Human Agents” (2016), “Artificial Intelligence for the Social Good” (2017), and “AI and Society: Ethics, Safety and Trustworthiness in Intelligent Agents” (2018) … As of 2019, the proceedings are no longer provided directly by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, but by the organizers of each symposium. As of summer 2021, the entire 2018 volume of the conference has been made available free of charge. It can be found via www.aaai.org/Library/Symposia/Spring/ss18.php or directly here. It includes contributions by Philip C. Jackson, Mark R. Waser, Barry M. Horowitz, John Licato, Stefania Costantini, Biplav Srivastava, and Oliver Bendel, among others.

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Care Robots and Sex

The paper “Care Robots with Sexual Assistance Functions” by Oliver Bendel, accepted at the AAAI 2020 Spring Symposium “Applied AI in Healthcare: Safety, Community, and the Environment”, can be accessed via arxiv.org/abs/2004.04428. From the abstract: “Residents in retirement and nursing homes have sexual needs just like other people. However, the semi-public situation makes it difficult for them to satisfy these existential concerns. In addition, they may not be able to meet a suitable partner or find it difficult to have a relationship for mental or physical reasons. People who live or are cared for at home can also be affected by this problem. Perhaps they can host someone more easily and discreetly than the residents of a health facility, but some elderly and disabled people may be restricted in some ways. This article examines the opportunities and risks that arise with regard to care robots with sexual assistance functions. First of all, it deals with sexual well-being. Then it presents robotic systems ranging from sex robots to care robots. Finally, the focus is on care robots, with the author exploring technical and design issues. A brief ethical discussion completes the article. The result is that care robots with sexual assistance functions could be an enrichment of the everyday life of people in need of care, but that we also have to consider some technical, design and moral aspects.” Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the physical meeting to be held at Stanford University was postponed. It will take place in November 2020 in Washington (AAAI 2020 Fall Symposium Series).

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Stanford University Must Stay in Bed

Stanford University announced that it would cancel in-person classes for the final two weeks of the winter quarter in response to the expanding outbreak of COVID-19. Even before that, the school had set its sights on larger events. These included the AAAI Spring Symposium Series, a legendary conference on artificial intelligence, which in recent years has also had a major impact on machine ethics and robot ethics or roboethics. The AAAI organization announced by email: “It is with regret that we must notify you of the cancellation of the physical meeting of the AAAI Spring Symposium at Stanford, March 23-25, due to the current situation surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak. Stanford has issued the following letter at news.stanford.edu/2020/03/03/message-campus-community-covid-19/, which strongly discourages and likely results in cancellation of any meeting with more than 150 participants.” What happens with the papers and talks is still unclear. Possibly they will be part of the AAAI Fall Symposium in Washington. The symposium “Applied AI in Healthcare: Safety, Community, and the Environment”, one of eight events, had to be cancelled as well – among other things, innovative approaches and technologies that are also relevant for crises and disasters such as COVID-19 would have been discussed there.

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Co-Robots as Care Robots

The paper “Co-Robots as Care Robots” by Oliver Bendel, Alina Gasser and Joel Siebenmann was accepted at the AAAI 2020 Spring Symposia. From the abstract: “Cooperation and collaboration robots, co-robots or cobots for short, are an integral part of factories. For example, they work closely with the fitters in the automotive sector, and everyone does what they do best. However, the novel robots are not only relevant in production and logistics, but also in the service sector, especially where proximity between them and the users is desired or unavoidable. For decades, individual solutions of a very different kind have been developed in care. Now experts are increasingly relying on co-robots and teaching them the special tasks that are involved in care or therapy. This article presents the advantages, but also the disadvantages of co-robots in care and support, and provides information with regard to human-robot interaction and communication. The article is based on a model that has already been tested in various nursing and retirement homes, namely Lio from F&P Robotics, and uses results from accompanying studies. The authors can show that co-robots are ideal for care and support in many ways. Of course, it is also important to consider a few points in order to guarantee functionality and acceptance.” The paper had been submitted to the symposium “Applied AI in Healthcare: Safety, Community, and the Environment”. Oliver Bendel will present the results at Stanford University between 23 and 25 March 2020.

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Interpretable AI for Well-Being

The papers of the AAAI 2019 Spring Symposium “Interpretable AI for Well-Being: Understanding Cognitive Bias and Social Embeddedness symposium” were published in October 2019. The participants had met at Stanford University at the end of March 2019 to present and discuss their findings. Session 5 (“Social Embeddedness”) includes the following publications: “Are Robot Tax, Basic Income or Basic Property Solutions to the Social Problems of Automation?” (Oliver Bendel), “Context-based Network Analysis of Structured Knowledge for Data Utilization” (Teruaki Hayashi, Yukio Ohsawa), “Extended Mind, Embedded AI, and ‘the Barrier of Meaning'” (Sadeq Rahimi), “Concept of Future Prototyping Methodology to Enhance Value Creation within Future Contexts” (Miwa Nishinaka, Yusuke Kishita, Hisashi Masuda, Kunio Shirahada), and “Maintaining Knowledge Distribution System’s Sustainability Using Common Value Auctions” (Anas Al-Tirawi, Robert G. Reynolds). The papers can be downloaded via ceur-ws.org/Vol-2448/.