Italy-Japan Workshop 2014: Gregor Fitzi

Affiliation:

Associated Lecturer
University of Potsdam
Potsdam, Germany

Title:

Between structured environments and everyday social interaction:

the societal challenges of robot co-workers

Abstract

While Robots are developed in laboratories, they normally are provided with a ‘status’. In Japan usually that of ‘friendly machines’. In European Laboratories by contrast there is more incertitude to be observed. Robots sometimes are addressed as machines, sometimes as ‘more-than-machines’ or as ‘virtual persons’. This difference is culturally determined. The presentation exposes the reasons of these different approaches and asks what the case is, if robotic co-workers are introduced into social reality. The development implies above all legal consequences. Law shapes social reality, by establishing clear limits to social action. In this respect there is a substantial analogy between Europe and Japan. Because of security reasons law does not allow any ‘contact’ between robots and human beings, as the legislation on industrial robotics shows. Humans live in the not structured and secured environment of everyday social interaction. Robots in contrast are caged in structured and secured environments.

The ‘spatial limits’ between the realm of robots and the realm of people are in reality social delimitations, i. e. social institutions that are needed to reproduce the structure of modern society (viz. in the sociological jargon of ‘functional differentiated society’). Law (especially the Declaration of Human Rights and the Civil Code) generalizes the grounding rules of this societal order. The central idea of robotics co-workers is that they should work ‘in contact’ with humans. This development challenges the institutional groundings of modern society. To open the spatial boundary between human and machine, by letting robots enter the everyday social interaction, means at once to liquefy the social institution that states that only human beings (legally natural persons) can be subjects of social action (legally subjects of legal capacity). Against this development there will be a major opposition. Latter however can assume different forms depending on the cultural background of the European and the Japanese society. The conclusions of the presentation will focus on this aspect.

Biography

PD Dr. Gregor Fitzi is associate lecturer at the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Potsdam, Germany. After the studies of Political Philosophy and Literature in Florence, Italy, he obtained 1999 his PhD in Sociology from the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Bielefeld, Germany. From 2000 to 2004 he was assistant at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Heidelberg, Germany and from 2004 to 2009 researcher at the University of Florence, Italy. From 2010 to 2014 he was senior researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. In February 2013 he habilitated at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Potsdam, Germany. His main interest areas are: sociological and political theory, sociology of culture, history of sociology, sociology of technology and European studies.

Main Publications

Books:

‒ Grenzen des Konsenses. Rekonstruktion einer Theorie transnormativer Vergesellschaftung. Potsdam, Weilerwist: Velbrück , 2014.

‒ Max Weber zur Einführung, Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 2008.

‒ Max Webers politisches Denken, Konstanz: UTB, 2004.

‒ Soziale Erfahrung und Lebensphilosophie. Georg Simmels Beziehung zu Henri Bergson, Konstanz: UVK, 2002.

Editions:

‒ (With Gesa Lindemann, Hironori Matsuzaki und Ilona Straub). Going Beyond the Laboratory: Reconsidering the Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications of Autonomous Robots. Special Issue of the Journal: Artificial Intelligence & Society (forthcoming 2015).

‒ (With Denis Thouard). Réciprocités sociales. Lectures de Simmel. Special Issue of: Sociologie et Société (Montréal), Volume 44, numéro 2, automne 2012.

‒ (With Claudia Portioli) Georg Simmel e l’estetica. Arte, conoscenza e vita moderna. Milan: Mimesis, 2006.

‒ (With Otthein Rammstedt) Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe Bd. 16 (Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen, Individuum und Gesellschaft, Lebensanschauung, Der Konflikt der Kultur) Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1999.