Care ethics has been advanced as a suitable framework for evaluating the ethical significance of assistive robotics. One of the most prominent care ethical contributions to the ethical assessment of assistive robots comes through the work of Aimee Van Wynsberghe, who has developed the Care-Centred Value-Sensitive Design framework (CCVSD) in order to incorporate care values into the design of assistive robots. Building upon the care ethics work of Joan Tronto, CCVSD has been able to highlight a number of ways in (...) which care practices can undergo significant ethical transformations upon the introduction of assistive robots. In this paper, we too build upon the work of Tronto in an effort to enrich the CCVSD framework. Combining insights from Tronto’s work with the sociological concept of _emotional labor_, we argue that CCVSD remains underdeveloped with respect to the impact robots may have on the emotional labor required by paid care workers. Emotional labor consists of the managing of emotions and of emotional bonding, both of which signify a demanding yet potentially fulfilling dimension of paid care work. Because of the conditions in which care labor is performed nowadays, emotional labor is also susceptible to exploitation. While CCVSD can acknowledge some manifestations of unrecognized emotional labor in care delivery, it remains limited in capturing the structural conditions that fuel this vulnerability to exploitation. We propose that the idea of _privileged irresponsibility,_ coined by Tronto, helps to understand how the exploitation of emotional labor can be prone to happen in roboticized care practices. (shrink)

Technology takes an unprecedented position in contemporary society. In particular, it has become part and parcel of governmental attempts to manufacture life in new ways. Such ideas concerning the governance of life organize around the same contention: that technology and life are, in fact, highly interconnectable. This is surprising because if one enters the sites of techno-scientific experimentation, those visions turn out to be much frailer and by no means “in place” yet. Rather, they afford or enforce constant interfacing work, (...) a particular mode of manufacturing life, rendering disparate, sturdy, and often surprisingly incompatible things available for one another. Here, we contend that both of those aspects, pervasive rationalities of interconnectability and practices of interfacing mark the cornerstones of what we call a new techno-bio-politics of life. In order to grasp the government of life under the technological condition, we must understand how both human and non-human entities are being rendered interconnectable and re-worked through practices of interfacing. We take neuro-technology and care robotics as two illustrative cases. Our analysis shows that the contemporary government of life is not primarily concerned with life itself in its biological re-constitution but rather with life as it is interfaced with and through technology. (shrink)

In the scenario of growing polarization of promises and dangers that surround artificial intelligence (AI), how to introduce responsible AI and robotics in healthcare? In this paper, we develop an ethical–political approach to introduce democratic mechanisms to technological development, what we call “Caring in the In-Between”. Focusing on the multiple possibilities for action that emerge in the realm of uncertainty, we propose an ethical and responsible framework focused on care actions in between fears and hopes. Using the theoretical perspective of (...) Science and Technology Studies and empirical research, “Caring in the In-Between” is based on three movements: the first is a change of focus from the world of promises and dangers to the world of uncertainties; the second is a conceptual shift from assuming a relationship with robotics based on a Human–Robot Interaction to another focused on the network in which the robot is embedded (the “Robot Embedded in a Network”); and the last is an ethical shift from a general normative framework to a discussion on the context of use. Based on these suggestions, “Caring in the In-Between” implies institutional challenges, as well as new practices in healthcare systems. It is articulated around three simultaneous processes, each of them related to practical actions in the “in-between” dimensions considered: monitoring relations and caring processes, through public engagement and institutional changes; including concerns and priorities of stakeholders, with the organization of participatory processes and alternative forms of representation; and making fears and hopes commensurable, through the choice of progressive and reversible actions. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of decision-makers toward the use of care robots in welfare services. We investigated their knowledge regarding the use of care robots in welfare services as well as their attitudes toward using robots in their own care and in the care of various user groups, for example, children, youths, and older people. We conducted an online survey with a range of Finnish decision-makers as respondents. The respondents were divided into two groups: (...) service actors and research and development actors. The respondents did not regard themselves as having much knowledge about robotics; however, the results showed that the R&D actors had more overall knowledge of the use of robots than the service actors. The R&D actors were found to be more willing to accept a robot as part of their own care as well as part of the care for various user groups. The contribution of this study is a better understanding of the views of the decision-makers who are or will be in charge of the acquisition of technological devices in welfare services. (shrink)