What started off as rather tame research on integrating care into retail robots, ended up as a creative and political call to upend increasingly automated food systems. Ley argues that robotics are the next step in a long history of separation from the human and non-human life involved in getting food on the table. The dissertation itself documents the author's unravelling as she comes to a concluding ethical vision: a messy and inefficient life of interconnection, led by the senses.

The dissertation draws together myriad academic fields, from philosophy of technology, phenomenology, robot-ethics, feminist theory, ethics of care, science and technology studies, and decolonial practices. Woven around the traditional academic chapters are poems, stories, creative prose, post-its, and photographs. By stretching into the creative and intuitive realms, the dissertation envisions what philosophy of technology might look like.
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What started off as rather tame research on integrating care into retail robots, ended up as a creative and political call to upend increasingly automated food systems. Ley argues that robotics are the next step in a long history of separation from the human and non-human life involved in getting food on the table. The dissertation itself documents the author's unravelling as she comes to a concluding ethical vision: a messy and inefficient life of interconnection, led by the senses.

The dissertation draws together myriad academic fields, from philosophy of technology, phenomenology, robot-ethics, feminist theory, ethics of care, science and technology studies, and decolonial practices. Woven around the traditional academic chapters are poems, stories, creative prose, post-its, and photographs. By stretching into the creative and intuitive realms, the dissertation envisions what philosophy of technology might look like.
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The discourse on the future of work should learn from a turn in philosophy that occurred in the 1980s, one that recognizes the good life towards which ethics strives can only be reached on a foundation of caring relationships (Gillian, 1982; Noddings, 1984). Care ethics recognizes that human well-being is a group project, one that involves strong relationships, and concern for bodies and emotions. Too often, these features are left out of research exploring robotics in the workplace. This paper outlines the main tenets of care ethics, then applies the moral framework to the context of industrial and retail settings using robots. This approach sees these contexts through a relational lens, helping to identify, evaluate, and improve relationships critical to ensuring workers’ well-being. Second, care ethics considers taking care of people’s bodies beyond mere safety, examining how working with robots can exacerbate societal or economic pressures. Lastly, care ethics takes emotions as an important source of knowledge in building and supporting care. Additionally, this paper contributes to the care ethics literature by applying the framework to the context of robotized industrial workplaces, which has yet to be done.@en

In this chapter, we review and expand on the current ethical research on Human–Robot Collaboration in industrial settings. To date, the ethical issues discussed include: job loss, reorganization of labour, informed consent and data collection, user-involvement in design, hierarchy in decision-making, and coerced acceptance of robots. These wide-ranging issues are a useful starting point for discussion, yet as the number of robots designed and deployed as collaborators in industrial settings grows, ethical research must evolve to allow for more nuance in the previously listed issues as well as a recognition of novel concerns as they arise. In this paper, we suggest new ethical aspects related to collaborative robots in industrial settings, including: emotional impact on workers; effects of limited movement; the potential effects of working with one’s replacement; the ‘chilling effects’ of performance monitoring; the possibility for disclosure of new and unintended information through data collection; and the inability to challenge computerized decisions. Taken together these thoughts are meant to open the door towards new forms of moral learning necessary for assessing the ethical acceptability of human–robot collaborations on the factory floor.@en

The last decade has seen rise in technologies that allow humans to send and receive intimate touch across long distances. Drawing together platform studies, digital intimacy studies, phenomenology of touch, and ethics of technology, we argue that these new haptic communication devices require specific ethical consideration of consent. The paper describes several technologies, including Kiiroo teledildonics, the Kissenger, the Apple Watch, and Hey Bracelet, highlighting how the sense of touch is used in marketing to evoke a feeling of connection within the digital sphere. We then discuss the ambiguity of skin-to-skin touch and how it is further complicated in digital touch by remediation through platforms, companies, developers, manufacturers, cloud storage sites, the collection and use of data, research, satellites, and the internet. Lastly, we raise concerns about how consent of data collection and physical consent between users will be determined, draw on examples in virtual reality and sex-robotics, and ultimately arguing for further interdisciplinary research into this area.

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Sophia is designed to make people feel comfortable. This begs the questions: What bodies are deemed acceptable? What ways of speaking? Which bodies are ambassadors of the future? Who decides this? This book chapter examines these questions through an STS lens. @en