Abstract
China’s top Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientist Chen Yiaoping forgot one decisive thing in his stunning statement in January 2019 for the nation’s South China morning Post, when he asked for ethical guidelines in the field of artificial intelligence, saying the technology had advanced to the point where it was time to discuss the risks. Chen, professor and director of the Robotics Laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China, is the inventor of Jia Jia, the female-looking humanoid robot branded “the Chinese Robot Goddess”, and of KeJia, an intelligent home service robot destined to serve humans in public places, for example, as a shopping assistant.
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Notes
- 1.
We here focus on robots equipped with intelligent systems such as AI (in most cases still in the early stages), which are implemented in different areas, such as speaking assistants in individual households (e.g. Google Home), assistants in public areas (e.g. Junko Chihira in Tokyo) as well as in the film industry (e.g. Ex Machina). That does not mean that new technologies are “all” given a female appearance. It is also questionable if feminization is the only problem: arguably the imaginary of male robot slaves is equally problematic.
- 2.
We concentrate on social robotics in this chapter, and thus exclude military robots and robots in the industry which are in their majority still not anthropomorphized to a similar extent.
- 3.
The difference between “strong” and “weak” AI has been defined by Russel and Norvig (2003: 947) as follows: “[T]he assertion that machines could possibly act intelligently (or, perhaps better, act as if they were intelligent) is called the weak AI hypothesis by philosophers, and the assertion that machines that do so are actually thinking (as opposed to simulating thinking) is called the strong AI hypothesis”.
- 4.
However, social robotics lately provides also good reasons for the zoomorphization of robots (see Kate Darling, Lusia Damiano & Paul Dumouchel). This trend comes to the fore not least through the rapidly increasing military use of advanced robotics.
- 5.
The NPC granted Xi Jinping unrestricted and near absolute power in March 2018.
- 6.
Transhumanism can be defined as “a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values” (More, 1990; see also Sorgner 2016; Bostrom 2005).
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Benedikter, R., Gruber, M. (2019). The Technological Retro-Revolution of Gender. In a Rising Post-Human and Post-Western World, It Is Time to Rediscuss the Politics of the Female Body. In: Loh, J., Coeckelbergh, M. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Technology. Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie, vol 2. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_10
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