As part of Engineered! A Week of Wonder,
a week-long programme of events celebrating engineering in Ireland,
the Faculty of Computing and Engineering
at the University of Ulster are offering a lunchtime seminar by Professor
Noel Sharkey in the Octagon,
Coleraine Campus on Tuesday 10th February 2009 at 12:00 p.m.
The seminar will end at 1:30 p.m.
Robots are entering our homes for domestic service; they are harvesting our fruit, making our cars, milking our cows, performing surgery, and nursing us. Yet we are surprisingly unprepared for the consequences. No proper guidelines have been set in place for the influx of these machines. Governments have been more concerned with issues such as the possibility of robots having legal rights than with the pressing ethical problem on our doorsteps. Work has already begun on robot carers for our aging populations and for minding our children. More worryingly, robots are integral to the US $230bn future combat systems project, a massive plan to develop unmanned vehicles that can strike from the air, under the sea and on land. South Korea and Israel are deploying armed robot border guards and China, Singapore and the UK are among those making increasing use of military robots. Uglier yet, the military technologies are coming back to haunt the civilian world with increased use in policing and surveillance. This talk aims to provoke wider discussion of the new developments and their ethical implications.
Attendees are invited to bring along a packed lunch to eat during the question and answer session in the Octagon.
This event is free of charge and open to the public. To reserve a seat, please contact Mrs Avril Fox on 028 9036 8314 or by email at a.fox@ulster.ac.uk.
Professor Noel Sharkey is a broadcaster, writer and academic. He is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and a Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield. He also hold the post of Visiting Professor at the School of Computing and Information Engineering at the Coleraine Campus of the University of Ulster. He currently holds an EPSRC Senior Media Fellowship to enable him to take discussions about the ethical issues of emerging technologies to the public and policy makers. In his spare time, he presents and appears in TV programmes of all sorts. He was senior judge for every series of Robot Wars and recently co-presented Bright Sparks for BBC Northern Ireland. Noel hosts a weekly one hour science radio programme, The Sound of Science, for Sheffield Live 93.2 FM.
For further information on this event, please contact:
Mrs Avril Fox
