Call for papers : « Faces/Phases of Humanoids: Ethics of Digital Surveillance, Sustainable World Models and Privacy Rights »
Faces/Phases of Humanoids: Ethics of Digital Surveillance, Sustainable World Models and Privacy Rights
Symposium - May 20th and 21st, 2025
Organizer: Suhasini VINCENT, MCF-HDR, University Paris-Panthéon-Assas
At the United Nations ‘AI for Global Good Summit’ in July 2023, nine AI-enabled humanoids attended the press conference to answer questions from the audience. Sophia, a Hanson Robotics-developed humanoid, programmed to be an innovation ambassador for the UNO, stated that robots could be more efficient and effective than humans in running the world. In the present digital age as AI embraces robotics into its fold, new fears of our times have prompted the caveat of humanoids becoming more autonomous, powerful and intelligent than the human race.
The faces/phases of humanoids have evolved since the 1961-fixed-base-industrial robot Unimate, operated by General Motors to assemble cars at the New Jersey production line. Today’s free-floating-based robot mechanism include defense bots with microcontrollers and sensors of facial recognition, flying robots capable of monitoring and mitigating climate change, underwater robots that can digitally watch over corals reefs and even sink unwanted algae, and ground robots that can surveil disaster management. Today’s cutting-edge humanoids equipped with zero-shot learning or the ability to classify images through a pre-trained AI model can make predictions on unseen data to be operative in the real world. With silicon skin that conceal their circuitry of mechatronic systems, bipedal robots with humanoid eyes of built-in cameras display a range of facial expressions akin to the human race.
As AI ‘robotics’ billionaires of our time like Brett ADCOCK, Elon MUSK, Guangneng WANG and Sam ALTMAN are entering into partnerships to operate humanoid robots at the billion-unit level, proponents for the integration of ‘Large Language Models’ (LLMs) and advanced sensor technologies into humanoid robotics believe it is time for the phasing out of outdated legacy machinery in favor of humanoids; opponents however point out that advanced humanoid robots will necessarily use ‘Large World Models’ (LWMs) which process massive amounts of real-world data from our movements caught on devices, sensors, surveillance cameras, and will use rare Earth minerals such as graphite, lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel whose mining activity would result in environmental problems like the disruption of ecosystems, deforestation, habitat destruction, pollution, and the emission of greenhouse gases. Humanoids are here to stay as their creators vie with each other offering the promise of meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The ethical challenges of prospering from a machine-assisted future are many with the different stakeholders, namely creators, policymakers, ethicists, and the general public musing on how to ensure the responsible and respectful treatment of humanoid robots. Should humanoids possess rights and protections analogous to human beings? As humanoids tend to build emotional ties with their users, it gives rise to the ethical quandary on the blurring of lines between machine and human relationships. How can developers and creators ensure the emotional well-being of both users and humanoids? What happens to the data collected by humanoids? When humans meet humanoids, is the human right to privacy violated? In a world where data is considered the king of the digital world, isn’t it time to set the parameters of future human-humanoid ventures?
Contributions are welcome from researchers of law, literature, civilization, philosophy, history, cultural studies and climate science. Proposals may contemplate on the following themes and are not restricted to them.
- Ethical challenges, dilemmas and guidelines in the use of humanoids.
- Digital surveillance and privacy rights.
- Sustainable World Models of human-robot collaborations.
- Humanoids and climate change.
- Humanoids and human rights.
- Phases and milestones of humanoid development and the reception to its evolution
- Reimagining Panopticon models with humanoids
- Humanoids, cyborgs, droids, bots and clones in literature, film, art, comics, video games and popular culture.
Papers may be presented in English or French, and a publication will be considered. Each presentation will last 20 minutes and will be followed by a discussion. Please submit your proposals of approximately 300 words, along with a short biography by November 30, 2024 to the organizer: Suhasini VINCENT.
The symposium is planned as an on-site event at the University Paris-Panthéon-Assas.