Κατεύθυνση Ιστορία και Φιλοσοφία της Επιστήμης και της Τεχνολογίας
Library of the School of Science

2022-08-10

2022

Tsakalakis Thomas

1) Αριστοτέλης Τύμπας, Καθηγητής, ΙΦΕΤ, ΕΚΠΑ
2) Στυλιανός Βιρβιδάκης, Καθηγητής, ΙΦΕΤ, ΕΚΠΑ
3) Εμμανουήλ Σίμος, Μεταδιδακτορικός υπότροφος, ΙΦΕΤ, ΕΚΠΑ

Philosophical and Sociopolitical Implications of the Representation of Robots in Literary Science Fiction: A Case Study of Douglas Adams’s “Marvin the Paranoid Android” and the “Electric Monk”

English

Philosophical and Sociopolitical Implications of the Representation of Robots in Literary Science Fiction: A Case Study of Douglas Adams’s “Marvin the Paranoid Android” and the “Electric Monk”

Rapid advances in the creation of AI-equipped anthropoid robots in the 21st century have led to the emergence of academic fields such as roboethics, which tackles moral concerns in regard to (a) whether robots might pose an existential threat to our species, (b) if a moral code could be programmed into robots in order to make them behave “ethically,” and (c) if, at some point in the future, robots will be capable of developing the ability to do ethical reasoning on their own, in which case they should perhaps be afforded the status of “person.” In collaboration with legal scholars and social scientists, roboethics also investigates a host of broader socio-political and cultural issues, such as the following: Will the 4th Industrial Revolution result in robots replacing us in job settings? What are the ramifications of using robots for either love (sexbots) or war (killer robots)? The concept of “automata” has been explored since the classical era, and robots are a staple of modern science fiction, which has struggled to establish itself as a “legitimate” literary genre, and this is even more true for the SF comedy that Douglas Adams wrote; nonetheless, we contend that the mordant humor and the self-referential wit of his novels, in which his robots serve as an antonym to comic relief, constitute an invaluable, subversive analytic tool for a critical re-examination of our species’ self-aggrandizing ontological and epistemological delusions.

Science

roboethics, sexbots, killer robots, 4IR, SF comedy

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https://pergamos.lib.uoa.gr/uoa/dl/object/3228938