Robotic Personhood: The Role of Public Engagement in Informing the Legal and Ethical Standing of Robots

这个博士项目将研究公众参与在告知英国机器人法律人格分配的伦理、政治和政策辩论方向方面可以发挥的作用。我将从三种不同的方式来研究这个问题：首先，我将在人工智能（AI）社会学的背景下，描绘正在进行的关于机器和人格的辩论。然后，我将对最近公众参与机器人实验的相关例子进行详细的回顾，并分析这些实验如何框架和影响公众对机器人的理解，以及它的法律、社会和伦理方面，包括人格。这项研究将为我自己的参与性实验的构建提供信息，该实验将利用科学技术研究（STS）和设计研究中的跨学科方法，并部署一个机器人实体来促进参与。我的实验将在公众和专家对机器人人格的争论之间进行检验和创建接口。我特别关注调查公众参与在多大程度上可以为我们的技术、社会和法律未来的这方面的政策提供信息。

This doctoral project will examine the role public engagement can play in informing the direction of ethical, political and policy debates about the assignment of legal personhood to robots in the United Kingdom. I will investigate this in three different ways: I will begin by mapping the on-going debate on machines and personhood in the context of the sociology of artificial intelligence (AI). I will then perform a detailed review of relevant examples of recent experiments in public engagement with robots, and analyse how these have framed and impacted the public understanding of robotics, and its legal, social and ethical aspects, including personhood. This research will inform the construction of my own participatory experiment, which will draw on interdisciplinary approaches in science and technology studies (STS) and design research, and deploy a robotic entity to prompt engagement. My experiment will both examine and create interfaces between public and expert debates about robotic personhood. I am especially concerned to investigate the extent to which public participation can inform policy about this aspect of our technological, social and legal future.