Beyond Moral Dilemmas

Abstract

HRI research has yielded intriguing empirical results connected to ethics and how we act in social contexts with robots, even though much of this work has focused on task-based, one-on-one interaction. In this paper, we point to the need to investigate a wider range of ethically relevant dynamics that interaction with robots carries with it -- individually and in groups, with a single robot or more. We specifically examine three areas: 1) the primacy and implicit dynamics of bodily perception, 2) the competing interests at work in a single robot-human interaction, and 3) the social intricacy of multiple agents -- robots and humans -- communicating and making decisions. While these areas are not exhaustive by any means, we find they yield concrete directions for how HRI can contribute to a widening, intensifying set of ethical debates with critical empirical insight, starting to explore more of the ethical landscape in HRI.