Are We Alone for 06/01/09 - Robots Call the Shots

Are We Alone - Robots Call the Shots
Dr. Robot, I presume? Your appendix may be removed by motor-driven, scalpel-wielding mechanical hands one day. Robots are debuting in the medical field… as well as on battlefields. And they’re increasingly making important decisions – on their own. But can we teach robots right from wrong? Find out why the onslaught of silicon intelligence has prompted a new field of robo-ethics.
Plus, robo-geologists: NASA’s vision for autonomous robots in space.
Guests:

• P.W. Singer – Director of the 21^st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and the author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
• Wendell Wallach – Chair of a technology and ethics working group for Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and the co-author of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong
• Pablo Garcia – – Principal engineer working on medical robotics at SRI International, Menlo Park, California
• Robert Anderson – Planetary geologist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Robyn Asimov – Daughter of author Isaac Asimov

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.