IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2020 - 10

ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND SOCIETAL ISSUES

United Against Racism
and a Call for Action
By Bram Vanderborght and Allison Okamura

he recent tragic loss of George
Floyd-and earlier of Ahmaud
Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Oscar
Grant, Stephon Clark, Mario
Woods, Jessica Williams, Stephen Taylor,
Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon
Martin, Sandra Bland, Amadou Diallo,
and many others-has returned the
spotlight to issues of systemic racism
and inequity. The result has been a
widespread movement to actively
combat racism through protests,
education, and new initiatives.
We are deeply saddened by tragic
losses of life due to racial violence. We
stand with the protests and condemn all
forms of racial violence, ethnic profiling, and racism. Participation in initiatives for change by diverse people
around the world gives us hope that we
are unified by common values and that
real change is possible.
Our international IEEE Robotics
and Automation Society (RAS) is represented in all geographical areas, and
many research groups have a rich diversity of nationalities-but this is insufficient to claim success in terms of inclusion. We must acknowledge that there
are very few black roboticists worldwide. Moreover, many communities are
left out of technological progress and
may even be harmed by it. We need to
self-reflect and recognize that our community can do much better when it
comes to being inclusive. Two important aspects we should consider in our
field are how robots impact society and

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2020.3009458
Date of current version: 10 September 2020

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

who participates in the development of
robotic technology.
Engineers and computer scientists
have to deal with moral choices. Technology and ethics are not separate
domains. We must recognize that technology is not neutral, and it is no different with robots. Wernher von Braun,
the leading figure in the development of
rocket technology in Nazi Germany,
was a so-called separatist. Von Braun
did not consider the ethical and social
implications of his work. Unethical
design choices are sometimes made on
purpose. For example, author Robert
Caro has explained that bridges
designed in New York City were built
with low clearance because the designer
wanted to prevent buses carrying blacks
and Latinos from New York City to
Jones Beach and other parks on Long
Island. Other examples of moral dimensions in technology are sometimes accidental but still have a chilling effect on
diversity and inclusion. A widely seen
example is the "racist automatic soap
dispenser" (https://youtu.be/YJjv_OeiHmo) that doesn't work for people with
dark skin tones, forcing work-arounds
like holding a white napkin underneath.
This is a consequence of designers who
do not foresee use cases or test the technology with a wide group of end users.
This is not just a technical error; it is an
ethical mistake.
How Do We Change?
First, we must consider ethics in our
work. Major tech companies have now
publicly distanced themselves from the
facial-recognition tools used by police,

SEPTEMBER 2020

in large part because these tools have
been found to misidentify people of
color, especially women of color, at
higher rates. This has been compellingly
demonstrated and analyzed by Joy
Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru. Some
people call for national laws, others for
pushing the pause button until racial
biases and other inequities are removed
from the code, and still others want to
ban the use of these tools entirely.
Another need more specific to
robotics is the elimination of terms like
"master" and "slave" from our code,
documentation, and literature. What
these terms represent in their narrow
technical sense is not the issue. Rather,
the use of these terms demonstrates a
lack of consideration of the substantial
emotional baggage the words carry due
to their historical use. The RAS Technical Committee on Telerobotics is formulating alternative terminology, and
we believe it is the responsibility of both
authors and reviewers/editorial boards
to prevent their use in publications,
given their triggering nature and the
fact that their use is not intrinsically
necessary. Twitter, for example, took
action and announced that it will also
change words such as "blacklist"
"grandfathered," and "man hours."
Too few researchers recognize the
social aspects of robotics, including the
intentional or unintentional assignment
of race and gender. In this issue of IEEE
Robotics and Automation Magazine, the
article "Do Robots Have Race?: Race,
Social Construction, and HRI" by philosopher Robert Sparrow [1] discusses
this issue and the possibility that one of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJjv_OeiHmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJjv_OeiHmo

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2020

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