February Lightning talks!

"The Ethics of Uncertainty: Can Morality be probabalistic?" by Pras Velagapudi

"I want Scooby back! A survey of military robots" by Debadeepta Dey

Since it'll be almost-V-day we'll also discuss Sonya Ziaja's presentation from the Int'l conference on Social Robotics analyzing legal dilemmas facing a love triangle among a married couple and a sexbot: "Homewrecker 2.0: An Exploration of Liability for Heart Balm Torts Involving AI Humanoid Consorts"

Attendees expressed desire for slides to be posted... stay tuned!

Postscript: Future Lightnings

Great first set of Lightnings!! Thanks to the delicious cupcakes!! Oh yeah, and to our speakers too: Randy, Saman and Heather.

Desired Future Topics

=Resource Scarcity in the context of large-scale usage of Electronics (Pras)

=Social Robots

=A Survey of currently existing Military Robots (Dey)

=The Singularity

=Mixed Autonomy: Ethics and Liability

=Fukashima Robots

=Robots and the Law

=Asimov's Laws under uncertainty

Speakers to Invite

=Bring in a Tepper Economist

=Duquesne University Philosopher

Related Talks

=Sebastian Thrun giving a video-cast lecture on Tuesday, December 6 about robot futures

=Peter Singer's recent CMU talk

Three claimed topics above will make up our mid-January Lightning!! Stay tuned!

Announcing: Our Inaugural Lighting Talk event!

We will be hosting our first-ever Positronic Lighting talk & discussion series Tuesday, November 29! They start with three short lightning talks, a robot film, then open to a group discussion. Feel free to bring topics or robot news! Tell your friends and loved ones!

DETAILS

Time: 5pm Tuesday, November 29

Location: NSH 3001 @ Carnegie Mellon University's Newell-Simon Hall

The Kick-offs:

- "Dirty, dangerous and dull: Are we really automating jobs that

humans don't want?" -Randy Sargent

- "Asimov's Laws for Roboticists: Universal ethical codes should

exist." -Saman Amraii

- "Milking Cows: Industrial farming and the most common service

robots." -Heather Knight

VIDEO: "Only Son - It's a Boy"

http://vimeo.com/groups/robotfilmfest/videos/24591658

Taking time to smell the roses!

Engineers are great developers, but what is it that our creations enable? What are the most fulfilling potentials we could hold ourselves to? This robot's got the right idea.

Image by Wendi Gratz

Irrational Rationality

Now planning a December event full of Lightning Talks, Breakneck Technology Developments and Featured Robot Film Festival videos! How might science fiction brainwash the future? Robots are numerical, but can we ever make ethics a calculation? What is our responsibility as the creators of rising intelligence? Get ready for raucous discussion and milkshakes!

A perspective to whet your appetite:
Creating a Robot Ethics Report Card: Principles for designers, builders and users of robots http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ourportfolio/themes/engineering/activities/Pages/principlesofrobotics.aspx

What astonishing news articles have *you* seen about Robots lately?

Presenting the Cyborg Cabaret...

In the last post we invited you to a workshop about a Technology Talent Show, in this post we give you additional background about the motivation and scheduling behind that project.

PASSION, TERROR & INTERDEPENDENCE
A Cyborg Cabaret, curated by Dan Wilcox & Heather Knight

“Love without anger isn’t love at all” - Devo

Ours is an interdisciplinary project exploring technology and humanity so intertwined as to be a metaphorical Cyborg. Assembling an interdisciplinary group of technologists, playwrights, actors, musicians, and artists to create and perform short pieces, we meditate on human-machine relationships: symbiosis and slavery, empowerment and dependence, stability and fragility. We will encourage and enable participants to incorporate robotics or sensors into the show. Bringing robots and performers together on stage, we explore narratives of ourselves through the foils of machine mirrors. Performances will be organized into a three part Cabaret series occurring during the Spring of 2011.

cyborgcabaret.tumblr.com // @cyborgcabaret

Come join our Charades!

Mark your calendars!

1) Positronic's next evening event! Meet and greet, let's get inspired!
Date: Tuesday, October 18 at 6pm
Locale: Kiva Han, 420 S Craig St

2) Cyborg Cabaret kickoff! Do you want to participate in a technology talent show?
Date: Wednesday, October 26 at 7pm
Locale: Assemble PGH, 5125 Penn Ave

3) Lunch with Professor Illah Nourbakhsh! He taught the class that inspired this group and is back from his London sabbatical for just a few days !
Date: Monday, November 14 at 12pm
Locale: Create Lab at CMU, Newell-Simon Hall A504