Thoughts from a robotics researcher (Timothy Bretl)

Full talk in audio : https://mini-symposium-tokyo.info/ICR...
Talk given at the ICRA 2014 Workshop "Robotics and Military Applications : From Current Research and Deployments to Legal and Ethical Questions" https://mini-symposium-tokyo.info/ICR...
Abstract : Robotics research is not value-neutral. We choose what to work on and who we ask to pay for it. These choices have consequences, the devastation of which in military conflict has become quite clear. As members of academia, we are in a position of privilege that both demands and derives from a responsibility to expose, consider, and act upon these consequences. I will briefly discuss the extent to which this responsibility is being sustained.