Human-robots Interaction: A Philosophical Framework for Social and Political Assessment

The European Parliament’s Resolution of 16 February 2017 about Robotics, paragraph 50 deals with the possibility of joint actions made by human beings and robots. Dealing with joint actions, however, entails speaking of sharing goals, values, norms, plans, etc. and, as a consequence, it seems to assume only people being involved. The paper is intended to explore what it means to attribute joint actions to human-robot interaction. It starts from the description of a general account of joint actions as interpersonal actions and takes into consideration the possibility for the human-robot couple to be the subject of such a kind of action. In order to better explain this point, the paper takes the interaction with a social robot as PARO as an example. In this way, we can elucidate to what extent and in which sense such an interaction can be defined as social and, thus, give birth to genuine joint actions. Indeed, such an analysis seems necessary in order to deal with the possibility of attributing responsibility to robots – i.e., another important point highlighted by the Resolution itself, which wonders if it is necessary to create a specific legal status for robots, i.e., that of ‘electronic person’. Indeed, sociality and responsibility seem to be very related concepts; is it possible to attribute the latter to someone who can only simulate the first? A theoretical framework seems necessary in order to understand social and political implications of some assumptions we risk to take for granted.