Robots

What is the role of robots in the society is one of the most important problems all of us will soon confront in one way or another. Currently, I work on three projects: Robot Haute Couture, Designing a Smart Society, Smart Houses as a New Type of Cognitions

The Robot Haute Couture project is placed in Cog Robot Lab at Lund University where we investigate how variations in robot embodiment influence the reception of a robot. Our idea is to create an haute-couture collection of clothes for Epi and to test human reactions to different designs.

Designing a Smart Society is a research project in which I look for models of relational networks of the future society inhabited by non-human agents. The project will be presented at Fair Design 2018

Abstract: Seasteading Institute will appear on the Pacific Ocean in two years from now. Researchers, engineers and investors will inhabit the floating city and work towards “restoring the environment, enriching poor, cure the sick and liberate humanity from politics”. The Institute has support from Bilderberg Group and Thiel Foundation – two most influential groups of interests in the contemporary World – that since many years are also involved in the scientific search for a technological cure from death. In consequence, Seasteading Institute might become a hub for the creation of thousands of new agents and new cognitions that will need to find a place within the existing society. There might be people who underwent cryonic life suspension, and then got awaken, but without memories of their previous lives; or people who replaced 80 % of their internal organs with artificial parts; there might be social robots that help in households or that work as research assistants. Their appearance will involve the formulation of new rules and laws that will enable the new society to function. How those rules and laws will be formulated, will depend on how do we define identity (if before dying I decided to upload my mind to an external artificial support, does my wife still have a husband or is she entitled to cash my life insurance?) or how do we define emotional relations between different types of cognitions (how do I explain what is love to my son who starts feeling strong connection with an android?).

The utopia of Seasteading Institute will be my starting point to formulate and address the questions that the society in which we live today is confronting more and more frequently. In addition to already existing relations between human agents, that often are complicated and difficult to categorise, the future society will confront a necessity to account for relations between humans and artificial agents. The multiplicity of diverse, and difficult to compare individual cognitions, makes this task highly complex. In my talk, I will propose a way of thinking that enables a peaceful navigation in the world where humans are not the only operating agents. The taxonomy, that I will design on the basis of the toy example of the Institute, will enable me to point out a way out from abundance, or excess, of the diversity of individual relations.