Seminario de lectura: Ética relacional aplicada al ámbito de la Inteligencia Artificial. Sesión 6

SESIÓN 6: Gertz, Nolen. "Hegel, the Struggle for Recognition, and Robots." y

Coeckelbergh, M. "The tragedy of the master: automation, vulnerability, and distance."

Sexta sesión del Seminario de lectura: Ética relacional aplicada al ámbito de la Inteligencia Artificial, en la que se tratarán los artículos: Gertz, Nolen. Hegel, the Struggle for Recognition, and Robots. y

Coeckelbergh, M. The tragedy of the master: automation, vulnerability, and distance.

Gertz, Nolen. (2018). Hegel, the Struggle for Recognition, and Robots. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology. Forthcoming. DOI:10.5840/techne201832080

Abstract:

While the mediational theories of Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek have helped to uncover the role that technologies play in ethical life, the role that technologies play in political life has received far less attention. In order to fill in this gap, I turn to the mediational theory of Hegel, as Hegel shows how the mediated nature of experience is vital to understanding the development of both ethical and political life. Through examples found in the military, in particular concerning the relationship between explosive ordnance detonation (EOD) soldiers and robots, I illustrate how Hegel’s analysis of the “struggle for recognition” can be used to understand human-technology relations from a political perspective. This political perspective can consequently help us to appreciate how technologies come to have a role in political life through our ability to experience solidarity with technology, a solidarity that is experienced by users due to the recognition of technologies as serving roles in society that I describe as functionally equivalent to the social roles of the user. The realization of this functional equivalence allows users to learn how they are perceived and respected by society through the experience of how functionally equivalent technologies are perceived and respected. Consequently, I conclude by focusing on the Dallas Police Department having turned an EOD robot from a life-saving to a life-taking device in order to show why Hegel is necessary for helping us to understand the political significance of recognizing and of misrecognizing technologies.

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Coeckelbergh, M. The tragedy of the master: automation, vulnerability, and distance. Ethics Inf Technol 17, 219–229 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-015-9377-6

Abstract:

Responding to long-standing warnings that robots and AI will enslave humans, I argue that the main problem we face is not that automation might turn us into slaves but, rather, that we remain masters. First I construct an argument concerning what I call ‘the tragedy of the master’: using the master–slave dialectic, I argue that automation technologies threaten to make us vulnerable, alienated, and automated masters. I elaborate the implications for power, knowledge, and experience. Then I critically discuss and question this argument but also the very thinking in terms of masters and slaves, which fuels both arguments. I question the discourse about slavery and object to the assumptions made about human–technology relations. However, I also show that the discussion about masters and slaves attends us to issues with human–human relations, in particular to the social consequences of automation such as power issues and the problem of the relation between automation and (un)employment. Finally, I reflect on how we can respond to our predicament, to ‘the tragedy of the master’.

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Seminario de lectura organizado por: Proyecto Interagents (Antonio Gaitán, Germán Massaguer) /PID2024-161933NA-I00, financiado por MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ y “FEDER/UE".