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

这个项目跟踪机器人厨房的兴起，并探索它们的伦理和社会问题。由于食物是如此基本，厨房自动化可能会产生深远的影响，超出技术伦理中的常见影响。厨房通常是我们家的心脏，在那里，传统和科学教育被传递给孩子。餐厅及其厨房也是我们社区和文化的核心。将创造性劳动自动化可能会影响社会关心的价值观，例如：儿童发展、家庭和社区关系、性别角色、文化和宗教传统、真实性、营养和福祉、食品安全和浪费、厨房卫生、经济活力、农业等。考虑到这种跨学科的复杂性和广泛颠覆的可能性，负责任的创新需要预测和解决可能的危害，同时最大化收益。目前的项目建立了一个框架和对这些伦理和社会因素的分析，以了解与机器人厨房相关的风险。作为关于这个主题的第一次广泛对话，该项目将在这个新兴领域规划和发展全面的问题，着眼于收益和风险。它还建立并推进了技术伦理中更常见的问题，如经济置换、社会孤立、追求效率和便利、人工智能偏见和错误、网络安全等。为了确保这项工作具有包容性，将在全球不同地区举办三个讲习班，以帮助说明文化或地区在态度和影响方面的差异。其目标是发布一份关于这一主题的公共“伦理影响报告”，以及其他学术产品和公共宣传。自动化总是伴随着权衡，在这样与关系、文化和社会如此纠缠的领域中，将远见应用于自动化甚至更加重要。除了这些更广泛的影响外，课程开发、外展和教育活动也被计划作为这项研究的一部分。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.