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The Religious Impacts of Taoism on Ethically Aligned Design in HRI

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Abstract

As robots become more and more ubiquitous in human society, the study of their emergence becomes critical to assessing robot performance and appropriateness for different applications, and for employment across countries with different cultural backgrounds. Throughout history, religion has been a major element in all human cultures, and there is a long history of religious commentary on the idea of automation. With emerging robotic platforms and applications already beginning to touch on the subject of religion, now is the right time to begin discussing this potentially controversial topic. The objective of this article is to analyze what impacts Taoist religion may have on the use of Ethically Aligned Design in future human–robot interaction.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Mr. Christopher Benek and Prof. Shuzhi Sam Ge for their helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP), RIKEN, 1-4-1 Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 103-0027, Japan

    Yueh-Hsuan Weng & Osamu Sakura

  2. Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aramaki aza Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan

    Yueh-Hsuan Weng

  3. Department of Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aramaki aza Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8579, Japan

    Yasuhisa Hirata

  4. Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Osamu Sakura

  5. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan

    Yusuke Sugahara

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  1. Yueh-Hsuan Weng
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  2. Yasuhisa Hirata
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  3. Osamu Sakura
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  4. Yusuke Sugahara
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Correspondence to Yueh-Hsuan Weng.

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Weng, YH., Hirata, Y., Sakura, O. et al. The Religious Impacts of Taoism on Ethically Aligned Design in HRI. Int J of Soc Robotics 11, 829–839 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00594-z

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