Thursday, December 12, 2019

Could your next doctors appointment include a robot ethicist

Could your next doctors appointment include a robot ethicistCould your next doctors appointment include a robot ethicistExperts estimate that as many as half of all jobs are vulnerable to automation. But youd think soft skills, like empathy and ethical judgment, might make some jobs less vulnerable than others. Well, maybe not. Heres a new set of jobs in the path of the robot invasion.pullquoteIf the robot stood there and told me to please calm down, Id smack him./pullquoteWhen we humans fight, we dont always fight fair. Arguments can bring out the worst in us, bringing out our our preconceived prejudices and assumptions. A new kind of ethicist wants to be your referee by taking messy, personal politics out of the equation, and adding impartial algorithms into it. This new breed of ethicist Robots.Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology developed a robot, called an intervening ethical governor, to help patients with Parkinsons Disease. As people with this disease lose control over their facial expressions and motor functions, they have trouble communicating emotions and needs with their caregivers. Between humans, this miscommunication can result in misunderstandings or worse. But with a robot weighing in and enforcing intervention rules, researchers aim to stop arguments from ever getting that far.Robot referees in your doctors officesBy observing patient-caregiver interactions, this robot referee will, according to its developers, intervene if a humans dignity becomes threatened due to others inappropriate behavior. Tracking patients and caregivers voice volume, speech, and location, the ethical robot will decide to intervene if we trigger the robots too angry, too quiet, or safety-first protocols. For example, if a patient starts getting loudly frustrated that they cant open a pill bottle, the robot will detect the patients raised voice and tell them, I understand. Lets calm down a little bit If a patient gets up and leaves the room, the robots camera sensors will pick this up. The robot will begin to wave its hands and implore, The session is not yet finished Please come backAlthough the researchers are still in the proof-of-concept stage, their five-year study could have a lasting positive impact on the millions of Americans affected by Parkinsons Disease if the robot ethicist gets adopted by clinics. In Europe, therapeutic robots are already being used to help children with autism and elderly patients with socialization issues.But we still have a ways to go before a robot referee will be weighing in on healthcare debates. To get qualitative feedback, the researchers recruited nine older adults to observe the robot ethicist in action as it mediated a patient-caregiver conversation. Results were mixed. Although the participants gave positive feedback on the robots safety-first purpose, they were less happy about the robots commanding and critical tone and the potential privacy issues. Would both parties consent to having a robo t mediator? participants wanted to know. No one wanted the robot to have the authority to judge patients and make them feel blamed.As one observer to the robots interactions put it, If the robot stood there and told me to please calm down, Id smack him.

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