Robotics and Public Issues: A Philosophical Agenda in Progress

We believe that a future public agenda of robotics is much more than a useful task to pursue. Rather, it is a necessity for any political entity that wants to keep track with the contemporary age. At the same time, we do not believe this agenda should only aim to produce a moratorium on robotics, or to develop regulations based on specific philosophical or even political conceptualization of ethics. On the contrary, we think that public decisions should aim at a kind of regulation that fully makes an interdisciplinary impact assessment of robotics, by combining different approaches to ethical analysis, which at the same time give shape to both a critical approach and a conscious openness to robotic developments. We need to regulate the progressive proliferation and introduction of robotics in human life. This means supporting robotics when it adds value to social and individual lives; but also providing institutions with restrictive tools for assessing effectiveness and the risks of the robotic technologies in question. This is the background from which the European project RoboLaw arose in 2012.