NRI: Food Is Fundamental: The Profound Ethical and Social Impacts of Robot Kitchens

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This project tracks the rise of robotic kitchens and explores their ethical and social issues. Because food is so fundamental, automating kitchens can have far-reaching impacts beyond the usual kinds in technology ethics. Kitchens are often the heart of our homes, where traditions and science education are passed along to children. Restaurants and their kitchens are also the heart of our communities and culture. Automating that creative labor may impact values that society cares about, such as: child development, family and communal relationships, gender roles, cultural and religious traditions, authenticity, nutrition and wellbeing, food safety and waste, kitchen hygiene, economic vitality, agriculture, and more. Given this interdisciplinary complexity and potential for widespread disruption, responsible innovation here requires anticipating and addressing possible harms, while maximizing the benefits. The current project develops a framework and analysis of these ethical and societal factors to understand the risks associated with robotic kitchens.As the first extensive conversation on the subject, the project will map out and develop a full range of issues in this emerging space, looking at both benefits and risks. It also builds upon and advances more familiar issues in technology ethics, such as economic displacement, social isolation, pursuit of efficiency and convenience, artificial intelligence bias and errors, cybersecurity, and so on. To ensure that the work is inclusive, three workshops will be held in different global geographies to help account for cultural or regional differences in attitudes and impacts. The goal is to deliver a public “ethics impact report” on the subject, along with other scholarly products and public outreach. Automation always comes with trade-offs, and it is even more essential to apply foresight to automation in domains like this, which are so entangled with relationships, cultures, and societies. In addition to these broader impacts, curriculum development, outreach and educational activities are planned as part of this research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.