News – Page 2 – Social Robot Futures

Academics Support Google Workers Against Company’s Military Project

May 15, 2018 / Algorithmic Warfare, Call to Action, Drones, Google, Killer Robots, Open Letter

On March 6th news broke that Google was participating in a pilot project with the US military, supplying artificial intelligence capabilities to automate the analysis of drone surveillance footage (see Gizmodo and New York Times). Since then, Google employees have signed a petition opposing their company’s involvement, twelve employees are “resigning in protest,” and “tech […]

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Jibo, Robot Servants, and Quality of Life

September 5, 2014 / Albert Borgmann, Evan Selinger, Google, Jibo, Prediction, Siri / 1 Comment

Following the media sensation around Jibo, the “world’s first family robot,” in an article posted on WIRED magazine (Sept 5, 2014) philosopher Evan Selinger reflects on the impacts that robot servants may have on our lives. While there may be advantages to living with domestic robots, notably having to do less manual work ourselves and

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Sci-Fi, Religion, Profits at Singularity U.

May 17, 2014 / Capitalism, Eric Benson, Heffernan, Religion, Science Fiction, Singularity University / 1 Comment

–Journalist Eric Benson’s week-long experience As Teresa Heffernan noted here last week, at the Silicon Valley-based Singularity University, “faith in technology and profit are unwavering, while the world’s problems are understood as great ‘market’ opportunities.” In March 2013, journalist Eric Benson took a weeklong $12,000 course in the Executive Program at the university. Not only

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