The impetus for establishing the Conference on the Impact of AI and Robotics stemmed from the maturation of artificial intelligence and robotics, particularly cognitive computing, which is causing an unprecedented shift in the role of labor and professionals in society. As a result, the focus of this conference will be on the impact of technology on knowledge labor and society, rather than the technology itself. We’re looking for research that covers a wide range of topics, such as the future of professions, knowledge networks enabled by cognitive computing and other technologies, education issues, collaborative robots, increasingly autonomous machines and their interactions with humans, whether we’ll need to demand ethical or at least acceptable social behavior from machines, and so on.
We’d like to see this conference grow into a key forum where natural scientists, social scientists, and philosophers come together to envision society’s future in the context of advanced AI and Robotics, in order to keep progress in balance with the meaning of life and humanity’s destiny – the stakes are far too high to do otherwise. As a result, we encourage contributions from philosophers who are interested in discussing the ethical implications of AI and the tension between science and conscience.
