RP2022: Robophilosophy 2022: Social Robots in Social Institutions University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland, August 16-19, 2022 |
Conference website | http://www.rp2022.org |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rp2022 |
Submission deadline | March 10, 2022 |
ROBOPHILOSOPHY 2022: Social Robots in Social Institutions
August 16–19, 2022, University of Helsinki, Finland
The aim of social robotics is to create entities capable of “social” interaction with humans. This raises questions about the notion of sociality, because our standard notions of sociality presuppose that the participants of interactions are persons, not robots or other artificial agents. In human societies, many forms of social interaction have become social institutions, that is, complex social forms that reproduce themselves, for instance, families, governments, legal systems, healthcare services, universities, and business corporations. In general, institutions emerge from social practices that coordinate activities by establishing formal and not merely informal rules, explicitly stating the goals and values they serve. In addition, rules of institutions assign offices and office-dependent entitlements and role-responsibilities to position holders, and manage the material resources necessary for practices. Institutions offer individuals incentives and sanctions to maintain their stability and to serve their goals. They also enable individuals to cooperate and provide a platform to resolve disagreements and conflicts among interests. The central aim of the conference is to understand and to critically evaluate how social robotics is transforming institutional structures, institutional practices, and the institution–citizen interaction for instance in the fields of social and health care, education, science, media, and law.
The societal significance of social robots is a central and urgent question for all social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines as social robots are restructuring, reshaping, and moulding central institutions of our societies. In light of institutional design it is of primary importance to understand how the introduction of social robots affects the ability of our institutions to perform their functions in society. Consequently, there is a need of understanding how the use of robots affects their rules, incentives for complying with rules, positional hierarchies, distribution of resources, and environmental constraints. We need to pay attention to the ecological and environmental consequences of large-scale use of social robotics and its technological prerequisites such as smart devices, networks, and computing and memory resources. By the same token, introduction and implementation of social robots in the context of central societal institutions raises normative questions having to do with trust in institutions, responsibility allocation, transparency and citizens’ right to explanation. From the legal point of view, a question worthy of thorough research is whether the introduction of social robots creates a need for novel kinds of regulation in the case of public institutions. As to the development of social robots capable of navigating in the social and institutional reality, it is crucial to enable them to recognize such normative aspects of social institutions as roles, norms, and practices. From the point of view of research of social ontology it is interesting to study the role of social robots in the collective construction of the social world.
Robophilosophy 2022 will explore these and related questions, with its usual broad scope, embracing both theoretical and practical angles. The event is an invitation to philosophers and other SSH researchers, as well as researchers in social robotics and HRI, to explore in detail, and from interdisciplinarily informed perspectives, how social robotics as an interdisciplinary endeavour can contribute to the ability of our insititutions to perform their functions in society.
Robophilosophy 2022 is the fifth event in the biennial Robophilosophy Conference Series (http://www.robo-philosophy.org) which was introduced with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary SSH research in and on social robotics. Robophilosophy is foremost “philosophy of, for, and by social robotics”, but it is a new area of interdisciplinary and often experimental research. Thus topically relevant research submissions from any discipline are welcome. The conference is planned to feature art installations, art events and special outreach sessions to communicate to policy makers and the public at large the core message of conference series: only if SSH humanities researchers join forces with the research community and practitioners in social robotics and HRI can we create futures worth living.
CONFIRMED PLENARIES
- Rachid Alami, Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems, University of Toulouse, France.
- Virginia Dignum, Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, Sweden.
- Maja Matarić, Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems (CRES), University of Southern California, USA.
- Seumas Miller, Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security Studies, Charles Sturt University, Australia.
- Catrin Misselhorn, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany.
- Sven Nyholm, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
IMPORTANT DATES
- Deadlines for submissions
- Workshop descriptions: February 15, 2022
- Posters, extended abstracts, full papers: February 28, 2022
- Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2022
- Final papers due: June 15, 2022
- Registration opens March 15, 2022
- General registration closes: June 30, 2022
- Late registration closes: August 10, 2022
TOPICS OF INTEREST (non-exclusive list)
- Robots and social institutions in general
- Robots in law and policing
- Robots in healthcare
- Robots and art
- Robots in education
- Robots and social justice
- Social roles and norms for robots
- Institutional design in light of AI and robots
- Institutional robotics
- Robots as social construction workers
SUBMISSION CATEGORIES
- Extended abstracts (1000–2000 words) for short research papers (4000–5000 words)
- Abstracts for poster presentations (1000–2000 words)
- Workshop descriptions (1000–3000 words, describing topic, format, and speakers)
FURTHER INFORMATION
- www: http://www.rp2022.org
- e-mail: rp2022@helsinki.fi
CONTACT
Main organizers: Raul Hakli (raul.hakli@helsinki.fi), Pekka Mäkelä (pekka.a.makela@helsinki.fi), and the RADAR group (http://radar.cs.helsinki.fi).