Call for papers
Special Issue of AI and Society: Killer
robots or friendly fridges: the social understanding of Artificial Intelligence
OVERVIEW
This CFP arises from the Symposium Killer robots or friendly fridges:
the social understanding of Artificial Intelligence
normal'> held at Heriot-Watt University as part of the AISB Symposia in April
2009.
For the non-specialist, the whole notion of
Artificial Intelligence challenges fundamental understandings of what it is to
be human, with enormous implications for how we conceive ourselves, our
artefacts and our societies.AIs
foundational goal was the construction of autonomous sentience. Yet, 55 years
after Turing's seminal paper, publicly visible achievements, beyond science
fiction speculations or media exaggerations, still lie in faltering steps in
voice and image recognition, surveillance, computer games and virtual
environments, not in truly intelligent everyday machines.
We seek papers that discuss the social
understanding of Artificial Intelligence, in particular the curious spaces
between popular expectations of machines that meet our every whim, fears of
humans enslaved or eliminated by crazed super-brains, and the sober reality of
toasters that still burn the bread.
At the start of the 21st century, it is
timely to reflect not just on the technical achievements and pitfalls of the
now mature discipline of Artificial Intelligence, but also on its wider social
understanding. While there have always been ill informed concerns about 'robots
taking over the world', the reality is both more prosaic and more complex.
People have long anthropomorphised complex artefacts which are capable of seemingly
autonomous interaction. However, recent advances in the deployment of
believable characters and affective systems, both in graphical and robotic
form, have rekindled problematic social and ethical questions about our
relationships with machines.
We would encourage work taking an
interdisciplinary perspective on the social understanding of Artificial
Intelligence, with the strong potential to bring together contemporary research
from Technology, Social Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology, Art and the Humanities.
RELEVANT TOPICS INCLUDE:
- AI, Ethics and privacy
- AI and Public Policy
- Portrayal of AI in film,
novel and other art forms
- Anthropomorphism and AI
- Attitudes towards robots
and graphical characters
- Believability, naturalism
and the uncanny valley
- Definitions of human-ness
and AI artefacts
- AI and gender
- Social impact of AI v
- Social expectations of AI
- Social perceptions of AI
Social/legal/economic
status of AIs
- Social/ethical implications
of AI augmentation of humans
- Human/AI construct
co-working
- If AIs could talk, would we
understand them?
- What is it like to be an AI?
SUBMISSIONS
We are seeking submissions of original papers that fit well with the
topics above. These should not have been submitted elsewhere and will be
subject to the normal journal review process. They should be not longer than 16
pages.
Papers presented at the AISB Symposium may be submitted in extended
versions as may relevant papers from its sibling events, the Symposium on New
frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction and Computing and Philosophy.
The
format and style templates can be found here for MSWord and here for LaTeX.
or
via the Springer AI&Society webpage. Papers should be submitted via the
EasyChair site at:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aisuoai09
IMPORTANT DATES
Sept 11th 2009 - submission of abstract
Sept 15th 2009 – submission of paper
October 30th 2009
– notification to authors
Dec 15th 2009
– Camera ready copies
CONTACT DETAILS
Prof Greg Michaelson/Prof
Ruth Aylett
Computer Science,
Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, EH14 4AS
G.Michaelson@hw.ac.uk/ruth@macs.hw.ac.uk
0131 451 3422/4189 (phone)
0131 451 3732 (FAX)
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