Cyberspace,simulation, artificial intelligence,affectionate machines and being human

Abstract

This article focuses on the question whether the technologically enabled advent of ‘virtual reality’ or ‘cyberspace’ has a significant impact on human experience of the world. Gilbert Germain's work on Virilio and Baudrillard gives greater insight in this regard, specifically regarding cyberspace as the new ‘frontier’, and focuses on the alienating effects of cyberspace regarding the human life-world. Turkle's recent work regarding robotics similarly points to a fundamental shift in human attitudes towards ‘embodied’ artificial intelligence, especially concerning its capacity for affectivity, which further marks a turning away from the complexity of human relationships in favour of supposedly uncomplicated ‘machine relationships’. Derrida enables one to better understand the changing relation between humans and machines in terms of the reconfiguration of human subjectivity. Together with Turkle's work in this domain, it points to a surprising ‘reconfiguration’ of conceptions regarding being human. Finally, Feenberg's retrospective on the fraught relations between humans and technology, as reflected in various fictional and theoretical works, as well as social developments, provides a suitable conclusion, given his affirmative remarks on the prospects of human autonomy in relation to the Internet.     

机器人促进了和谐劳动关系与就业质量吗？

工业机器人在中国制造业企业的应用迅速增长,对制造业劳动关系造成冲击还是有助于改善劳 动关系治理、提供高质量就业,这是制造业机器人自动化技术进步趋势下经济高质量发展需要探究的重要问题。 本研究采用中国企业—劳动力匹配调查（CEES）数据构建劳动关系指标体系,分析了工业机器人应用对劳动关 系和就业质量的影响。研究表明：应用工业机器人有助于制造业企业构建和谐劳动关系,在考虑内生性下,结 论依然成立;应用工业机器人企业的劳动者收入水平相对更高,企业内部收入差距更小,员工社会保险更完善, 劳动者就业满意度更高。     

Automated processing of forensic casework samples using robotic workstations equipped with nondisposable tips: contamination prevention

An automated process has been developed for the analysis of forensic casework samples using TECAN Genesis RSP 150/8 or Freedom EVO liquid handling workstations equipped exclusively with nondisposable tips. Robot tip cleaning routines have been incorporated strategically within the DNA extraction process as well as at the end of each session. Alternative options were examined for cleaning the tips and different strategies were employed to verify cross-contamination. A 2% sodium hypochlorite wash (1/5th dilution of the 10.8% commercial bleach stock) proved to be the best overall approach for preventing cross-contamination of samples processed using our automated protocol. The bleach wash steps do not adversely impact the short tandem repeat (STR) profiles developed from DNA extracted robotically and allow for major cost savings through the implementation of fixed tips. We have demonstrated that robotic workstations equipped with fixed pipette tips can be used with confidence with properly designed tip washing routines to process casework samples using an adapted magnetic bead extraction protocol.     

The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence: A Survey of Japanese and International Literature

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes a genealogical perspective to the social sciences study of robots in Japan, proposing a widely applicable research on “robot cultures.” The author discusses the corporate and governmental strategies and mechanisms that are shaping a national robot culture through establishing robot “lineages” and a national robot history which can have significant implications for both humans and robots. The paper contributes discussions on monozukuri (manufacturing) and Nihonjinron (theories on “Japaneseness”) to the existing anthropological consideration of robots, by examining links between monozukuri and robots, robot genealogy, popular culture and robots, and different social rituals and sites that help the enculturation of robots. The paper draws attention to the power relations and hegemonies of robot culture which also imply the existence of plurality and diversity that will require further scholarly attention as the robot phenomenon unfolds.     

Robots vs migrants? Reconfiguring the future of Japanese institutional eldercare

Japan faces a large and rapidly growing care labor shortage. A common assumption is that the government has a choice between alternatives that will shape the future of its institutional elderly care provision: increase the number of migrant caregivers, or use robots and other emergent technologies to substitute for human carers. This article, based on data from seven months’ ethnographic fieldwork at an elderly care home in Japan that was introducing three different types of care robot, challenges this binary framing. The introduction of these robots served to reconfigure care – increasing the amount of work tasks for human caregivers, deskilling aspects of care labor, and raising overall costs. The robots displaced rather than replaced human labor, recalibrating the distance between carers and recipients of care. While such devices may have been intended by politicians and engineers to solve Japan’s care crisis by replacing human caregivers, the reality of robot use makes this unlikely in the foreseeable future. Yet by reconfiguring care and helping overcome linguistic and cultural barriers – rendering it “culturally odorless” – robots may facilitate the introduction of migrant caregivers at the cost of the further precaritization, commodification, and devaluation of care work.