IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020 - 60

Although the DREAM project included an ethics arm,
it missed key issues around the autistic child and his
interaction with robots. As such it left the door open for
what could, in the legal framework of some countries, be
treated as child cruelty.
In contrast to the DREAM ethics, ACTIVE ethics offers
a better chance of developing a human-centered ethics
that addresses the ethical issues surrounding the child.
Without a focus on the child we end up with a kind of
institutional ethics. An institutional ethics will address
issues such as privacy, data protection, clinical access to
data, and job losses. These are issues that may be of
interest to regulators and commercial organizations
more than the autistic child.
ACTIVE ethics is human-centered. We must get inside
the mind of the human and thereby set ethical boundaries and pursue ethical design based on our understanding of the autistic child. We must understand what the
difficulties are and how the child thinks. Hence we will
address the autonomy of the subject, the relationship to
community, how the child and parent understand the
robot, what knowledge they have about what it is actually doing, how the identity of the autistic child is established, how we value the skills, personality, or even the
simple humanity of the child, and how we empathize
with the child.
I am not alone in questioning the ethics of using
robots for therapy with autistic children (see [18]). But to
completely reject the therapeutic use of robots in autism
would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A
human-centered approach to robots is needed that
focuses on the child rather than the technology. The
presence of a robot may simplify a complex emotional
environment, enabling the child to focus on communication without having to cope with emotional overload. It
can be a mediator of communication, used as a tool to
facilitate communication between therapist and child. It
can be an instrument of creativity as the child leads and
the robot follows. It can support the development of selfawareness and self-expression.
However, at the heart of robot therapy is a metaphysical issue concerning how we view the nature of
humans. If we view humans from a materialist, posthuman position we will see them as just a body, psychologically empty, and behave as though we can program
the inconveniently socially inept child exactly as we
would a robot. There will be nothing unethical about
enforcing 40 hours-a-week robot-administered rote
learning, nor describing the autistic child as a robot.
Such a post-humanist approach seems quite logical.
There is no difference between a robot, a rat, and an
autistic child. Radical behaviorism delivered by a robot
is a very efficient approach. But if we view the human as
something more than a machine, we cannot possibly

60

devolve the responsibility for a therapeutic relationship
to a mechanical toy.

Author Information
Neil McBride is with the Center for Computing and Social
Responsibility, De Montfort University, Leicester, U.K.

References
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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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MARCH 2020

http://134.184.131.111/Books/AshbyReqVar.pdf http://134.184.131.111/Books/AshbyReqVar.pdf http://www.neurodiversity.com/library_chance_1974.html https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/people-with-autism-can-read-emotions-feel-empathy/ https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/people-with-autism-can-read-emotions-feel-empathy/ https://autismawarenesscentre.com/shutdowns-stress-autism/accessed4/8/2019 https://autismawarenesscentre.com/shutdowns-stress-autism/accessed4/8/2019 https://www.wired.co.uk/article/autisim-children-treatment-robots https://www.wired.co.uk/article/autisim-children-treatment-robots http://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/departments/pharmacy/the-robot/ http://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/departments/pharmacy/the-robot/ https://www.wired.com/story/tug-the-busy-little-robot-nurse-will-see-you-now/ https://www.wired.com/story/tug-the-busy-little-robot-nurse-will-see-you-now/

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020

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