Browsing by Author "Richardson, Kathleen"

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    An Ethical Framework for Emerging Technologies: the TEAeM Approach
    (Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 2025) Bhalla, Nitika; Brooks, Laurence; Richardson, Kathleen; Cannizzaro, Sara
    The inherent nature of uncertainty and the indefinite time horizon of emerging technologies means that their effective ethical governance is not sufficiently addressed by industry and hence society. This paper explores an approach to enhance existing ethical frameworks that can be useful and relevant to new and emerging technologies. We begin with the analysis of literature exploring some of the technical features of each framework and its potential applicability to emerging technologies. Following this, a detailed outline of a broad ethical framework has been proposed using a combination of existing ethical frameworks, namely Anticipatory Technology Ethics plus (ATE+), Ethical Impact Assessment (EIA) and a Futures Studies approach, including empirical insights and stakeholder consultation from an EC funded project called TechEthos. The results of the synthesis of the existing ethical frameworks have led to the development of an enhanced framework called ‘TEAeM’ (TechEthos Anticipatory Ethics Model), which builds on existing tools (rather than replace them) to support the ethical considerations of new and emerging technologies. The usefulness of this framework extends across industry, researchers and policy makers.
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    An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines
    (Routledge, 2015-02-14) Richardson, Kathleen
    This book explores the making of robots in labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It examines the cultural ideas that go into the making of robots, and the role of fiction in co-constructing the technological practices of the robotic scientists. The book engages with debates in anthropological theorizing regarding the way that robots are reimagined as intelligent, autonomous and social and weaved into lived social realities. Richardson charts the move away from the “worker” robot of the 1920s to the “social” one of the 2000s, as robots are reimagined as companions, friends and therapeutic agents.
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    Archiving the self? Facebook as biography of social and relational memory
    (Emerald, 2009) Richardson, Kathleen; Hessey, Sue
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    Are Sex Robots as Bad as Killing Robots
    (IOS Press, 2016-10-25) Richardson, Kathleen
    In 2015 the Campaign Against Sex Robots was launched to draw attention to the technological production of new kinds of objects: sex robots of women and children. The campaign was launched shortly after the Future of Life Institute published an online petition: “Autonomous Weapons: An Open Letter From AI and Robotics Researchers” which was signed by leading luminaries in the field of AI and Robotics. In response to the Campaign, an academic at Oxford University opened an ethics thread “Are sex robots as bad as killer robots?” writing ‘I did sign FLI’s [Future of Life Institute] open letter advocating a ban on autonomous weapons. I would not sign a similar letter arguing for a ban on sex robots.’ Are sex robots really an innocuous contribution to the robotics industry and human relations that we should not worry about? And to what extent would challenging sex robots threaten male power and sexuality with males the primary buyers of women and children’s bodies? Robotics and AI are fields overwhelming dominated by men, how does the politics of gender shape what technologies are considered ethically problematic or permissible?
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    The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship’: Parallels Between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots.
    (ACM, 2015-06-01) Richardson, Kathleen
    In this paper I examine the model of asymmetrical ‘relationship’ that is imported from prostitution-client sex work to human-robot sex. Specifically, I address the arguments proposed by David Levy who identifies prostitution/sex work as a model that can be imported into human-robot sex relations. I draw on literature in anthropology that deals with the anthropomorphism of nonhuman things and the way that things reflect back to us gendered notions of sexuality. In the final part of the paper I propose that prostitution is no ordinary activity and relies on the ability to use a person as a thing and this is why parallels between sex robots and prostitution are so frequently found by their advocates.
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    The Business of Robots and AI
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020-01-01) Richardson, Kathleen
    The paper studies the involvement of business in the development of ethics for robots and AI
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    Challenging Sociality? An Anthropology of robots, autism and attachment
    (Springer Nature, 2018-06-25) Richardson, Kathleen
    This book explores the development of humanoid robots for helping children with autism develop social skills and is based on fieldwork in the UK and the USA. Robotic scientists propose that robots can therapeutically help children with autism because there is a “special” affinity between autistic people and mechanical things. I draw attention to the way that people with autism are presented as possessing a machinelike state and I challenge the ways in which mechanical analogies between machines and children with autism are deployed in the robotic sciences. The idea that children with autism have a preference for machines over people was developed by autism experts but is an idea mobilized and put to use in robotics; informing the field of therapeutic robotics. Autism is also seen as a gendered condition, with men considered less “social” and therefore more likely to have the condition. I explore how these experiments in cultivating social skills in children with autism using robots, while focused on a unique subsection, is the model for a new kind of commercially informed human-machine relationship for wider society across the capitalist world where machines can take on the role of the “you” in the interpersonal encounter. To understand this new relationship, I explore the history, psychiatry, clinical studies, perspectives on attachment and critical studies of autism, and the ethics of interpersonal sociality between human beings.
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    The Complexity of Otherness: Anthropological contributions to robots and AI
    (Oxford University Press, 2020-05-01) Richardson, Kathleen
    The chapter explores anthropological contribution to robotics and AI.
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    Disabling as mimesis and alterity: making humanoid robots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, 2010) Richardson, Kathleen
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    Ethics of climate engineering: Don’t forget technology has an ethical aspect too
    (Elsevier, 2021-11-10) Brooks, Laurence; Cannizzaro, Sara; Umbrello, Steven; Bernstein, Michael; Richardson, Kathleen
    Climate change may well be the most important issue of the 21st century and the world’s response, in the form of ‘Climate Engineering’, is therefore of equal pre-eminent importance. However, while there are technological challenges, there are equally just as important ethical challenges that these technologies also generate. Governments, funding agencies and non-governmental organisations increasingly recognise the importance of incorporating ethics into the development of emerging technologies (for example, within the EU draft legislation on AI). As the world faces the global challenge of climate change there are urgent efforts to develop strategies so that responses to the climate problems do not reproduce more of the same. Ethical values from the onset are fundamental to this process and need highlighting. Hence, this paper analyses a series of ethical codes, framework and guidelines of the new emerging technologies of climate engineering (CE) through a review of both published academic literature and grey literature from either industry, government, and non-governmental (NGO) organisations. This paper was developed as part of a collaboration with international partners from TechEthos (TechEthos receives funding from the EU H2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101006249; Ethics of Emerging Technologies), an EU-funded project that deals with the ethics of the new and emerging technologies anticipated to have high socio-economic impact. Our findings have identified the following ethical considerations including autonomy, freedom, integrity, human rights and privacy in the developmental process of climate engineering, while a poverty of ethical values reflecting dignity and trust were noted.
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    eXtended Reality of socio-motor interactions: Current Trends and Ethical Considerations for Mixed Reality Environments Design
    (ACM, 2023-10-09) Ayache, Julia; Bieńkiewicz, Marta; Richardson, Kathleen; Bardy, Benoit
    Social interactions are multi-modal, and their translation into virtuous and smooth interactions in digital, hybrid reality spaces constitute a technological challenge with profound but often dismissed ethical considerations (such as harmful consequences). In particular, the increasing reliance on algorithms (i.e., artificial intelligence) to emulate “seamless” communication patterns between human and artificial agents calls for caution in designing such systems. This short paper reviews current trends in rendering hyper-realistic human bodies and motor behaviors, focusing on the ethical issues of manipulating kinematics in human-to-human and human-to-artificial agent interactions.
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    How to Build a Supervised Autonomous System for Robot-Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
    (De Gruyter, 2017-05-11) Esteban, P. G.; Baxter, Paul; Belpaeme, Tony; Billing, Erik; Cai, Haibin; Cao, Hoang-Long; Coeckelbergh, Mark; Costescu, Cristina; David, Daniel; De Beir, Albert; Fang, Yingfeng; Ju, Zhaojie; Kennedy, James; Liu, Honghai; Mazel, Alexandre; Pandey, Amit; Richardson, Kathleen; Senft, Emmanuel; Thill, Serge; Van de Perre, Greet; Vanderborght, Bram; Vernon, David; Yu, Hui; Ziemke, Tom
    Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through remote control of the robot in so-called Wizard of Oz (WoZ) paradigms.However, there is a need to increase the autonomy of the robot both to lighten the burden on human therapists (who have to remain in control and, importantly, supervise the robot) and to provide a consistent therapeutic experience. This paper seeks to provide insight into increasing the autonomy level of social robots in therapy to move beyond WoZ. With the final aim of improved human-human social interaction for the children, this multidisciplinary research seeks to facilitate the use of social robots as tools in clinical situations by addressing the challenge of increasing robot autonomy.We introduce the clinical framework in which the developments are tested, alongside initial data obtained from patients in a first phase of the project using a WoZ set-up mimicking the targeted supervised-autonomy behaviour. We further describe the implemented system architecture capable of providing the robot with supervised autonomy.
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    Manmade woman - a feminist study of sex robots
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) Richardson, Kathleen; Odlind, Charlotta
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    Revolutionary Robots
    (Springer, 2023-12-31) Richardson, Kathleen
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    Robot Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism (DREAM): A Social Model of Autism
    (IEEE, 2018-03-06) Richardson, Kathleen; Coeckelbergh, Mark; Wakunuma, Kutoma; Billing, Erik; Ziemke, Tom; Gomez, P.; Vanderborght, Bram; Belpaeme, Tony
    The development of social robots for children with autism has been a growth field in the last 15 years. This paper reviews studies in robots and autism as a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts on social-communication development and the way in which social robots could help children with autism develop social skills. Drawing on the ethics research from the EU funded DREAM project (framework 7), based on incorporating perspectives in our way of understanding autism from autism advocacy, parents of children with autism, medical practitioners in the field, and adults with Asperger’s, we propose that we start from the position that the child with autism is a social being with difficulties in expressing this sociality, and then following on from this core assumption, exploring how social robots can help children with autism develop social skills. We challenge the view that children with autism prefer technologies over other kinds of activities (exploring nature or the arts), engagements with other living beings (animals) or lack interest in human relationship (particularly close caregivers).
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    The robot intermediary: Mechanical analogies and autism
    (Wiley, 2016-06-16) Richardson, Kathleen
    This article explores the use of social robots as therapeutic agents for helping children with autism. I explore the circulation and use of mechanical analogies to describe autism extended by psychiatrists and autism experts. These analogies have been adopted by robotic scientists interested in developing robots as social agents and as therapeutic agents.
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    Robot-enhanced therapy: development and validation of supervised autonomous robotic system for autism spectrum disorders therapy
    (IEEE, 2019-04-09) Richardson, Kathleen; Cao, H.; Esteban, P.G.; Bartlett, M.; Belpaeme, T.; Billing, E.; Cai, H.; Coeckelbergh, Mark; Costescu, C.; David, D.; Beir, A.D.; Hermandez, D.; Kennedy, J.; Liu, Honghai; Matu, S.; Mazel, A.; Pandey, A.; Senft, E.; Thill, S.; de Perre, G.V.; Vanderborght, B.; Vernon, D.; Wakanuma, K.; Yu, H.; Zhou, X.; Ziemke, T.
    R obot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has shown po- tential advantages to improve social skills for children with Autism Spectrum Disor- ders (ASD). This paper overviews the technology development and clinical results of the EC-FP7 funded DREAM project that aims to develop the next level of RAT in both clinical and technologi- cal perspectives – which we term Robot-Enhanced Therapy (RET). Within the project, a supervised autonomous robotic system is collaboratively de- veloped by an interdisciplinary consortium, includ- ing psychotherapists, cognitive scientists, roboti- cists, computer scientists and ethicists, allowing the robot control to go beyond the classical remote control methods (Wizard of Oz – WoZ) while ensur- ing safe and ethical robot behavior. Rigorous clin- ical studies are conducted to validate the efficacy of RET. Current results indicate that RET can ob- tain equivalent performance compared to human standard therapy for children with ASD. We also discuss the next steps of developing RET robotic systems.
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    Sensing-Enhanced Therapy System for Assessing Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Feasibility Study
    (IEEE, 2018-10-23) Cai, Haibin; Fang, Yingfeng; Ju, Zhaojie; Costescu, Cristina; David, Daniel; Billing, Erik; Ziemke, Tom; Thill, Serge; Belpaeme, Tony; Vanderborght, Bram; Vernon, David; Richardson, Kathleen
    It is evident that recently reported robot-assisted therapy systems for assessment of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) lack autonomous interaction abilities and require significant human resources. This paper proposes a sensing system that automatically extracts and fuses sensory features, such as body motion features, facial expressions, and gaze features, further assessing the children behaviors by mapping them to therapist-specified behavioral classes. Experimental results show that the developed system has a capability of interpreting characteristic data of children with ASD, thus has the potential to increase the autonomy of robots under the supervision of a therapist and enhance the quality of the digital description of children with ASD. The research outcomes pave the way to a feasible machine-assisted system for their behavior assessment.