Rüya Tuna Toparlak (U Lucerne) has posted “Between a Subject and an Object: Addressing the Social Valence of Robots” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article concentrates on the social valence of robots as a factor in contributing to our collaboration with robots and facilitating these connections. Chapter I starts with establishing the properties of social robots and what constitutes social valence. The paper describes the emerging association built on human-robot collaboration. The paper then moves on to describe the dangers of manipulation and how it can affect liability considerations. The social valence of robots causes them to push the boundaries of the traditional object-subject paradigm. The tensions this causes are inspected under Chapter II. Discussion surrounding the legal subjectivity of robots has so far differentiated these technologies mainly by autonomy, function, and sophistication. This paper aims to concentrate on the appearance of the robot and how it is experienced by the human. Humans do not interact in the same way with different robots. The paper holds the position that this should be an important consideration in how we approach regulation. For this purpose, the draft AI Act of the EU is inspected under section III for provisions that might be relevant to or affected by the social valence of robots.