On Care Robots and the Ethics of Tracking

Abstract

This paper establishes a transdisciplinary exploration of care robots and their tracking capacity as an ethical performance. It does this to highlight the concerns around the ubiquity and availability of data in care contexts. In my attempt to scrutinise care robots beyond being humanoid and sociable actors, but instead as data tracking technologies, I link robot ethics, media and surveillance studies with posthuman and performative ethics to redefine tracking as an ethical microcosm within care robots. I do this, first, by challenging how to look at care robots and robot interactivity, particularly in reference to tracking as an ethical, not necessarily moral, question of interactivity and relationality. This angle will challenge the ethical timing and evaluation around tracking as an inherently ethical relation. Second, by arguing that the common ethical views on tracking are about concerns of privacy intrusion and data infringement while overlooking that a main ethical issue might not be a robotic intention to spy but the availability of data because of robots. Consequently, what deserves more attention in the ethics of robots is the growing ubiquity of care robots, the sensitivity of care contexts, and the acknowledgement of data appropriation; the latter being especially important considering the vulnerability of health care environments, and the growing commercial value of health data.

Intersectional Inquiry, on the Ground and in the Algorithm

“…The “care” robots that are already beginning to infiltrate disability and aged care are not human-sized “friends” who replicate, with enhanced capabilities, the practical and emotional care of family or professional human support workers. Instead, they are codes, apps, and algorithms that indeed perform some of the everyday support work the parental carers describe for their adult children (such as reminders about medication or behavioral reinforcement) but also monitor and surveil people with disability and the care and support workforce (e.g., Panico et al, 2020; Stamboliev, 2020).…”