Janina Loh:
HOW DOES AI FEEL? HOW DOES AI LOVE?
DOES THE AI ACT MORALLY?
Robot ethics, trans- and posthumanism
Release: 21.03.2024
Expert:
Janina Loh
Moderation/Conversation
:
Elena Messner,
Gabriele Schelle
Consequence:
3
We talk about the study
Robot ethics
by Janina Loh, published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2019. Janina Loh is a philosopher and ethicist. In the podcast we hear some quotes spoken by her. We talk about trans- and posthumanism, robot ethics and what inspires us to tell stories from the perspective of AI.
About the expert:
Dr. Janina Loh (née Sombetzki) is Ethiky 1 in an ethics department at the Liebenau Foundation in Meckenbeuren on Lake Constance and holds an honorary professorship at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences at the Center for Ethics and Responsibility (ZEV) for ethics of technology and its social contexts.Loh studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and completed her doctorate from 2009 to 2013 as part of the DFG-funded graduate school "Constitution beyond the state: From the European to the global legal community?", supervised by Prof. Volker Gerhardt and Prof. Rahel Jaeggi. Loh's dissertation "Responsibility as a concept, ability, task. A three-level analysis" was published by Springer VS in 2014. After a three-year post-doc stay at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel (2013-2016), Janina Loh worked as a university assistant (post-doc) in the field of technology and media philosophy at the University of Vienna (2016-2021). In 2018, Loh published the first German-language introduction to trans- and posthumanism (Junius, 4th edition 2023, Korean translation 2021).
In 2019, Loh published an introduction to "Robot Ethics" (Suhrkamp). Loh's fourth book and habilitation project outlines a "Critical Posthumanist Ethics of Companionship for the Knowledge Spaces" (working title). In addition to responsibility, trans- and posthumanism, and robot ethics, Janina Loh's narrower research interests include Hannah Arendt, feminist philosophy of technology, theories of judgment, sustainability (particularly in connection with Loh's concept of critical posthumanist ethics and with a view to artificial intelligence, digitalization, and robotics), polyamory, and ethics in the sciences.
1
In her self-description, Loh uses Phettberg’s degendering.
About the host:
Elena Messner is an award-winning writer and cultural scientist. Gabriele Schelle is a theatre director and author.In this episode:
0:00 Intro
1:41 Robot ethics is a relatively young field of ethics
2:19 Robots as “moral agents” and “moral objects”
3:47 Human-robot interaction
5:39 1. Quote from “Robot Ethics”, p. 96 (Speaker: Janina Loh)
7:12 Wrestling with humanism
8:44 2. Quote from “Robot Ethics”, p. 39 (Speaker: Janina Loh)
12:00 Humanization of non-human entities
12:54 Act of writing
14:03 3. Quote from “Robot Ethics”, p. 76 (Speaker: Janina Loh)
15:54 Social robots
19:09 4. Quote from “Robot Ethics”, p. 80 (Speaker: Janina Loh)
20:05 “Robots are always somewhere in between”
22:37 The Uncanny
24:37 Sadness vs. Comedy
28:55 5. Quote from “Robot Ethics”, p. 13 (Speaker: Janina Loh)
29:39 Lack of philosophical discourse on AI in German-speaking countries
35:14 6. Quote from “Robot Ethics”, p. 205 (Speaker: Janina Loh)
Links and sources:
- Homepage: Janina Loh
- Trans- and Posthumanism: An Introduction, Junius Verlag, 2018
- Social Robots and the Good Life (Transcript Verlag)
Robot Ethics, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2019
Dating apps and sex robots: How algorithms shape our “love” Article on ReFrame (Tech), Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2019
Sex robots – a feminist technology? FALTER Think-tank, 2019
Can humans make love? An inclusive perspective on love, friendship and sex with non-human beings. PRAE|FAKTISCH. A philosophy blog. 10/2023
Transhumanism, Technological Posthumanism, Critical Posthumanism Swiss Portal for Philosophy
Responsibility and Robot Ethics: a Critical Overview, MDPI University of Vienna (Open access)
Editorial staff and collaboration:
Elena Messner (curation/presentation), Gabriele Schelle (curation/presentation), Christian Nisslmüller (production manager), Martin Lohr (studio manager), Alisa Karabut (graphics)
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We would like to thank the Schleswig-Holstein State Library for supporting the podcast.
Thanks for listening and see you next time!
"Actually, not only do we not know what it is like to be a machine or an animal, for example a bat - to paraphrase the title of a famous text by Thomas Nagel (1974). But we also do not really know what it is like to be our human counterpart. Because it cannot be determined with certainty whether people are actually endowed with free will and similar abilities. We cannot prove them empirically. The difference is that in the case of humans, we are prepared to make the additional assumption that they have the skills in question."
Janina Loh,
