Investigating the challenge of ethics and technology

The development of technology and novelties such as robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes hand in hand with ethical challenges. Students of the Faculty of Arts and Communication Sciences of CEU USP have investigated it thanks to a collaboration project with the tech toys company Juguetrónica.

Promoting the initiative and interest of students on new technologies is a way to approach the nearest future. Moreover, with it we anticipate and prepare ourselves to face ethical dilemmas that will surely arise.

CEU –Juguetrónica Competition: ethical challenges of the future

To encourage reflection on these issues, the University CEU San Pablo hosted on 26^th November a competition. It was organized by the Faculty of Arts and Communication Sciences along with Robotronica, the educational division of Juguetrónica.

The objective of this activity was focused on addressing the ethical application of new technologies from different perspectives. It also intended to motivate students to investigate in order to face such actual challenges as well as implementing what they had learnt about Ethics.

Organized in groups students investigated and exposed their conclusions about one of the six challenges on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics presented. One of them addressed privacy and data management with regard to Big Data. We generate more and more data without knowing, with our activity in the net and also outside it. They have high commercial value and their huge volume is essential for the development of AI. In this case we investigated and analysed from the ethical point of view the limit of privacy in a world where all our data consciously and unconsciously generated will be digitalized and therefore materialized.

It also presented issues regarding the anatomy of machines. Students studied the actual development and future perspectives of Deep Learning which involves the delegation of the decision making process on algorithms without human intervention. In this line they discussed the possibility of machines having feelings. Although AI does neither require a physical body to exist nor feelings to perform its duties, there are scientists trying to provide them with robotic bodies, with reasoning and simulations of human feelings.

Moreover, another group dealt with the influence of AI on education. This coexistence will benefit students although it will also bring about ethical dilemmas and some risks. It also investigated how it is already affecting the world of journalism and marketing.

After exposing the investigations of different groups of students the winner was chosen. It was a group formed by seven students that will have the chance to attend a workshop on Robotics and Drones at Juguetrónica.