During 2010 and 2011, I surveyed published data from robot competitions around the world. I collected more than 2,000 unique robot names spanning a period of over 20 years. This material formed the basis of my master’s thesis for the Digital Cultures Program at Sydney University. I have presented the work in progress as a poster at ISRE2010 in Gold Coast, Australia, HRI2011 in Lausanne, Switzerland and ARSO2011 in San Francisco, USA.
HRI2011_AndraKeay_Poster_Large
First Manifesto of Robot Rights 2010
I call upon us to stop unthinking anthropomorphism of robots. Robots are still coming into being. Our casual humanising of robotics is colonising, reinforcing dominant social structures of gender, race and class. We see only what looks like us. We blind ourselves to potential. We should rather refer to all robots as ‘ze’, ‘zey’ and ‘zem’, unless there is a specific reason to imitate a gendered human response. Robot names should be more fluid, not fix identity as faux humans. Robots and non human organisms should have zer/their right to existence formally recognized as more than just the sum of our interaction with zem/them. Robots are uniquely situated, as designed organisms or mechanisms, to free us from the chains of humanity, not replicate them.
This is the seed of the first robot manifesto of rights. There are many people who have expressed these ideas in more nuanced ways, from Isaac Asimov to Joseph Weizenbaum, who created ELIZA in the 1960s and wrote Computer Power and Human Reason, to Donna Haraway’s work on covering the range of simians, cyborgs, women, engineered and companion animals. More recently, roboethics is the topic of many conferences, books and committees. It’s time to discuss our co-existence.
This piece was first published here on October 23 2010.
Allyson Kapin Andra Keay Bad Predictions Brookings Institute Caroline Pantofaru Christopher Ford design Federal Robotics Commission Frank Langela frog futurist Gender Heather Knight Interaction Design IROS2013 Jake Schreier James Marsden Ken Goldberg Leila Takayama Liv Tyler Masahiro Mori methodology need finding Paul Saffo Rad Robohub Robot and Frank robotics robots Robots Rodney Brooks Savioke scott jenson Silicon Valley Robotics smart device Sundance Susan Sarandon trend Tully Foote Uncanny Valley UX web summit Willow Garage Wired Women Who Tech
The Robot State 