Argument synthesis paper

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camps, Varricchio et al. show that the thero-

pod origin of avian breeding behavior is

consistent with male parental care as the

primitive breeding system of birds, thus

resolving the conflict between ecological

and phylogenetic ornithologists.

These researchers have an excellent track

record of establishing details of extinct thero-

pod biology that have changed our views of

the origins of avian biology. In 1997,

Varricchio et al. (13) proposed that Troodon

laid their eggs two at a time and that the

uniquely avian behavior of laying the clutch of

eggs over a series of days evolved in theropods

before the origin of birds or flight. This bold

idea was dramatically confirmed in 2005 with

a discovery of an oviraptoran fossil with a pair

of shelled eggs inside her pelvis (14).

According to the new hypothesis (4), the

parental behaviors of living Paleognathes

(like the cassowary) and extinct theropods

(like Oviraptor) are homologous, and their

breeding systems remained unchanged since

their common ancestry. But could male

parental care have evolved independently in

Paleognathes and Cretaceous dinosaurs?

There are many lineages between the

Paleognathes and the oviraptorans and

troodontids (including the huge, flightless,

colonial diver Hesperornis, the pigeon-sized

Confuciusornis with elongate ornamental tail

feathers, and the archetypal Archaeopteryx).

Many of these creatures seem so similar

in ecology to various modern birds with

biparental care that it is tempting to think that

their breeding biology should also be similar.

However, Varricchio et al.’s hypothesis may

be supported by the observation that the

male-only parental care system has resisted

evolutionary change. Most Paleognathes

have retained this breeding system, despite

substantial ecological radiation, since before

the K/T boundary over 65 million years ago

(15, 16). Thus, there may be substantial con-

straints to evolving female incubation if her

female ancestors have not done so for tens of

millions of years before her.

In the absence of a coherent hypothesis

for the origin of birds during the greater part

of the 20th century, most evolutionary expla-

nations of avian biology focused on how

unique birds are (1). Scientists are now iden-

tifying the dinosaurian origins of many of the

formerly unique features of birds. Are there

limits to ornithological revelations that the

theropod origin of birds will yield? It seems

not. Focused research and lucky paleonto-

logical discoveries may someday uncover the

theropod origin of bird song, avian respira-

tion, and more.

References

1. R. O. Prum, Auk 119, 1 (2002). 2. R. O. Prum, A. H. Brush, Quart. Rev. Biol. 77, 261 (2002). 3. X. Xu et al., Nature 421, 335 (2003). 4. D. J. Varricchio et al., Science 322, 1826 (2008). 5. H. F. Osborn, Am. Mus. Nov. 144, 1 (1924). 6. M. A. Norell, J. M. Clark, L. Chiappe, D. Dashzeveg,

Nature 378, 774 (1995). 7. M. H. Schweitzer, J. L. Wittemeyer, J. R. Horner, Science

308, 1456 (2005). 8. J. D. Ligon, The Evolution of Avian Breeding Systems

(Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1999). 9. S. J. J. F. Davies, Ratites and Tinamous (Oxford Univ.

Press, Oxford, 2001). 10. T. Wesolowski, Am. Nat. 143, 39 (1994). 11. B. S. Tullberg, M. Ah-King, H. Temrin, Philos. Trans. R.

Soc. B 357, 251 (2002). 12. T. Wesolowski, Behav. Ecol. 15, 520 (2004). 13. D. J. Varricchio, F. Jackson, J. J. Borkowski, J. R. Horner,

Nature 385, 247 (1997). 14. T. Sato, Y. Cheng, X. Wu, D. K. Zelenitsky, Y. Hsiao,

Science 308, 375 (2005). 15. J. Clarke et al., Nature 433, 305 (2005). 16. J. W. Brown et al., BMC Biol. 6, 6 (2008).

10.1126/science.1168808

R obots have been used in laboratories

and factories for many years, but their

uses are changing fast. Since the turn

of the century, sales of professional and per-

sonal service robots have risen sharply and are

estimated to total ~5.5 million in 2008. This

number, which far outstrips the 1 million

operational industrial robots on the planet, is

estimated to reach 11.5 million by 2011 (1).

Service robots are good at dull, dangerous,

and dirty work, such as cleaning sewers or

windows and performing domestic duties in

the home. They harvest fruit, pump gasoline,

assist doctors and surgeons, dispose of bombs,

and even entertain us. Yet the use of service

robots poses unanticipated risks and ethical

problems. Two main areas of potential ethical

risk are considered here: the care of children

and the elderly, and the development of

autonomous robot weapons by the military.

The widespread availability of service

robots has resulted from several develop-

ments that allowed robots to become mobile,

interactive machines. Artificial intelligence

has not met its early promise of truly intelli-

gent machines, but researchers in the emerg-

ing field of human-robot interaction have

implemented artificial intelligence tech-

niques for the expression of emotion, lan-

guage interaction, speech perception, and

face recognition (2, 3).

Sophisticated control algorithms have

been developed (4) and have been combined

with advances in sensor technology, nano-

technology, materials science, mechanical

engineering, and high-speed miniaturized

computing. With the prices of robot manu-

facture falling—robots were 80% cheaper in

2006 than they were in 1990—service

robots are set to enter our lives in unprece-

dented numbers.

In the area of personal-care robots,

Japanese and South Korean companies have

developed child-minding robots that have

facilities for video-game playing, conducting

verbal quiz games, speech recognition, face

recognition, and conversation. Mobility and

semiautonomous function are ideal for visual

and auditory monitoring; radio-frequency

identification tags provide alerts when chil-

dren move out of range. The robots can be

controlled by mobile phone or from a window

on a PC that allows input from camera “eyes”

and remote talking from caregivers.

Research on child-minding robots in the

United States (5) using the Sony Qurio and

large-scale testing by NEC in Japan with their

PaPeRo have demonstrated close bonding and

attachment by children, who, in most cases, pre-

fer a robot to a teddy bear. Short-term exposure

can provide an enjoyable and entertaining expe-

rience that creates interest and curiosity. In the

same way, television and computer games may

be used by parents as an entertainment or dis-

traction for short periods. They do not provide

care and the children still need human attention.

However, because of the physical safety that

robot minders provide, children could be left

without human contact for many hours a day or

perhaps for several days, and the possible psy-

chological impact of the varying degrees of

social isolation on development is unknown.

The use of robots to care for the young and

the old, and as autonomous agents on the

battlefield, raises ethical issues. The Ethical Frontiers of Robotics Noel Sharkey

C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E

Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

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What would happen if a parent were to leave a child in the safe hands of a future robot caregiver almost exclusively? The truth is that we do not know what the effects of the long- term exposure of infants would be. We cannot conduct controlled experiments on children to find out the consequences of long-term bond- ing with a robot, but we can get some indica- tion from early psychological work on mater- nal deprivation and attachment. Studies of early development in monkeys have shown that severe social dysfunction occurs in infant animals allowed to develop attachments only to inanimate surrogates (6).

Despite these potential problems, no inter- national or national legislation or policy guidelines exist except in terms of negligence, which has not yet been tested in court for robot surrogates and may be difficult to prove in the home (relative to cases of physical abuse). There is no guidance from any international Nanny code of ethics, nor even from the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children (7) except by inference. There is a vital need for public discussion to decide the limits of robot use before the industry and busy parents make the decision themselves.

At the other end of the age spectrum, the rel- ative increase in many countries in the popula- tion of the elderly relative to available younger caregivers has spurred the development of sophisticated elder-care robots. Examples include the Secom “My Spoon” automatic feeding robot, the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses, and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot for monitoring, delivering messages, and reminding about med- icine. These robots can help the elderly to main- tain independence in their own homes (8), but their presence could lead to the risk of leaving the elderly in the exclusive care of machines. The elderly need the human contact that is often only provided by caregivers and people per-

forming day-to-day tasks for them (9). Robot companions such as Paro the seal are

marketed as pets because they are soft and cud- dly and are designed to imitate some of the fea- tures of pets, such as purring when touched— they are exploiting human zoomorphism. They are being touted as a solution to the con- tact problem, but these are still toys that do not alleviate elder isolation, even if they may relieve some of the guilt felt by relatives or society in general about this problem. The suc- cess of these robots may stem from people being systematically deluded about the real nature of their relation to the devices (10, 11).

A different set of ethical issues is raised by the use of robots in military applications. Coalition military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have deployed more than 5000 mobile robots. Most are used for surveillance or bomb dis- posal, but some, like the Talon SWORD and MAARS, are heav- ily armed for use in combat, although there have been no reports of lethality yet. The semi- autonomous unmanned combat air vehicles, such as the MQ1 Predator and MQ9 Reapers, carry Hellfire missiles and bombs that have been involved in many strikes against insurgent targets

that have resulted in the deaths of many inno- cents, including children.

Currently, all these weapons have a human in the loop to decide when to apply lethal force. However, there are plans to create robots that can autonomously locate targets and destroy them without human intervention (12)—a high-priority agenda item for all the U.S. armed services (13, 14). Ground-based unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) such as DARPA’s Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle (the PerceptOR Integration System) are already being created (15). The military contractor, BAE Systems, has “completed a flying trial which, for the first time, demon- strated the coordinated control of multiple UAVs autonomously completing a series of tasks” (16). These developments fit with a major goal of the Future Combat Systems project, with estimated costs to exceed $230 billion, to use robots as force multipliers; one soldier can be a nexus for initiating large-scale ground (17) and aerial robot attacks (13). Robot autonomy is required because one sol- dier cannot control several robots.

The ethical problems arise because no computational system can discriminate between combatants and innocents in a close-contact encounter. Computer programs

require a clear definition of a noncombatant, but none is available. The 1944 Geneva Convention suggests common sense, while the 1977 Protocol 1 update defines a civilian as someone who is not a combatant (18). Even with a definition, sensing systems are inade- quate for the discrimination challenge, partic- ularly in urban insurgency warfare. These complexities are difficult to resolve even for experienced troops in the field. No computa- tional inference systems yet exist that could deal with the huge number of circumstances where lethal force is inappropriate. These sys- tems should not be confused with smart bombs or submunitions that require accurate human targeting.

Robots for care and for war represent just two of many ethically problematic areas that will soon arise from the rapid increase and spreading diversity of robotics applications. Scientists and engineers working in robotics must be mindful of the potential dangers of their work, and public and international dis- cussion is vital in order to set policy guide- lines for ethical and safe application before the guidelines set themselves.

References and Notes

1. IFR Statistical Department, World Robotics Report 2008 (www.worldrobotics.org).

2. C. Breazeal, Robot. Auton. Sys. 42, 167 (2003). 3. T. Fong, I. Nourbakhsh, K. Dautenhahn, Robot. Auton.

Sys. 42, 143 (2003). 4. R. A. Brooks, IEEE J. Robot. Automat. 2, 14 (1986). 5. F. Tanaka, A. Cicourel, J. R. Movellan, Proc. Natl. Acad.

Sci. U.S.A. 194, 46 (2007). 6. D. Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the

Science of Affection (Wiley, Chichester, UK, 2003). 7. Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted and

opened for signature, ratification, and accession by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 44/25, 20 November 1989.

8. J. Forlizzi, C. DiSalvo, F. Gemperle, Hum. Comput. Interact. 19, 25 (2004).

9. R. Sparrow, L. Sparrow, Minds Machines 16, 141 (2004). 10. R. Sparrow, Ethics Inform. Technol. 4, 305 (2002). 11. N. E. Sharkey, A. J. C. Sharkey, Artif. Intell. Rev. 25, 9

(2007). 12. N. E. Sharkey, IEEE Intell. Sys. 23, 14 (July–August

2008). 13. U.S. Department of Defense, Unmanned Systems

Roadmap 2007–2032 (10 December 2007). 14. National Research Council, Committee on Autonomous

Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations, Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operation (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005).

15. Fox News, “Pentagon’s ‘Crusher’ Robot Vehicle Nearly Ready to Go,” 27 February 2008 (www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332755,00.html).

16. United Press International, “BAE Systems Tech Boosts Robot UAV’s IQ,” Industry Briefing, 26 February 2008 (http://bae-systems-news.newslib.com/story/3951- 3226462).

17. U.S. Department of Defense, LSD (AT&L) Defense Systems/Land Warfare and Munitions 3090, Joint

Robotics Program Master Plan FY2005 (2005). 18. Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1977

(Article 50). 19. Supported by a fellowship from the Engineering and

Physical Sciences Research Council, UK.

10.1126/science.1164582

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The Ethical Frontiers of Robotics Noel Sharkey

DOI: 10.1126/science.1164582 (5909), 1800-1801.322Science

ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/322/5909/1800

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