[humaine news] CFP: Special issue of AI and Society

[Ruth Aylett]

  Call for papers
  Special Issue of AI and Society: Killer robots or friendly fridges:  
the social understanding of Artificial Intelligence
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/krff-special-issue.html
OVERVIEW
This CFP arises from the Symposium Killer robots or friendly fridges:  
the social understanding of Artificial Intelligence held at Heriot- 
Watt University as part of the AISB Symposia in April 2009.
For the non-specialist, the whole notion of Artificial Intelligence  
challenges fundamental understandings of what it is to be human, with  
enormous implications for how we conceive ourselves, our artefacts  
and our societies.  AI’s foundational goal was the construction of  
autonomous sentience. Yet, 55 years after Turing’s seminal paper,  
publicly visible achievements, beyond science fiction speculations or  
media exaggerations, still lie in faltering steps in voice and image  
recognition, surveillance, computer games and virtual environments,  
not in truly intelligent everyday machines.

We seek papers that discuss the social understanding of Artificial  
Intelligence, in particular the curious spaces between popular  
expectations of machines that meet our every whim, fears of humans  
enslaved or eliminated by crazed super-brains, and the sober reality  
of toasters that still burn the bread.
At the start of the 21st century, it is timely to reflect not just on  
the technical achievements and pitfalls of the now mature discipline  
of Artificial Intelligence, but also on its wider social  
understanding. While there have always been ill informed concerns  
about “robots taking over the world”, the reality is both more  
prosaic and more complex. People have long anthropomorphised complex  
artefacts which are capable of seemingly autonomous interaction.  
However, recent advances in the deployment of believable characters  
and affective systems, both in graphical and robotic form, have  
rekindled problematic social and ethical questions about our  
relationships with machines.

We would encourage work taking an interdisciplinary perspective on  
the social understanding of Artificial Intelligence, with the strong  
potential to bring together contemporary research from Technology,  
Social Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology, Art and the Humanities.

RELEVANT TOPICS INCLUDE:
-   AI, Ethics and privacy
-   AI and Public Policy
-   Portrayal of AI in film, novel and other art forms
-   Anthropomorphism and AI
-   Attitudes towards robots and graphical characters
-   Believability, naturalism and the uncanny valley
-   Definitions of human-ness and AI artefacts
-   AI and gender
-   Social impact of AI
-   Social expectations of AI
-   Social perceptions of AI
-   Social/legal/economic status of AIs
-   Social/ethical implications of AI augmentation of humans
-   Human/AI construct co-working
-   If AIs could talk, would we understand them?
-   What is it like to be an AI?

SUBMISSIONS
We are seeking submissions of original papers that fit well with the  
topics above. These should not have been submitted elsewhere and will  
be subject to the normal journal review process. They should be not  
longer than 16 pages.

Papers presented at the AISB Symposium may be submitted in extended  
versions as may relevant papers from its sibling events, the  
Symposium on New frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction and Computing  
and Philosophy.

The format and style templates can be found at:
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/krff-special-issue.html

or via the Springer AI&Society webpage. Papers should be submitted  
via the EasyChair site at:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aisuoai09

IMPORTANT DATES
Sept 11th   2009 - submission of abstract
Sept 15th  2009 – submission of paper
October 30th 2009 – notification to authors
Dec 15th 2009 – Camera ready copies

CONTACT DETAILS
Prof Greg Michaelson/Prof Ruth Aylett
Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, EH14 4AS
G.Michaelson at hw.ac.uk/ruth at macs.hw.ac.uk
0131 451 3422/4189 (phone)
0131 451 3732 (FAX)


-- 
Ruth Aylett                                   Professor of Computer  
Science
Mathematics and Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK      Tel: 44-131-451-4189     Fax:  
44-131-451-3327
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/                      "Life is beautiful"



-- 
Heriot-Watt University is a Scottish charity
registered under charity number SC000278.