Immune moral models? Pro-social rule breaking as a moral enhancement approach for ethical AI

We are moving towards a future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) based agents make many decisions on behalf of humans. From healthcare decision-making to social media censoring, these agents face problems, and make decisions with ethical and societal implications. Ethical behaviour is a critical characteristic that we would like in a human-centric AI. A common observation in human-centric industries, like the service industry and healthcare, is that their professionals tend to break rules, if necessary, for pro-social reasons. This behaviour among humans is defined as pro-social rule breaking. To make AI agents more human-centric, we argue that there is a need for a mechanism that helps AI agents identify when to break rules set by their designers. To understand when AI agents need to break rules, we examine the conditions under which humans break rules for pro-social reasons. In this paper, we present a study that introduces a ‘vaccination strategy dilemma’ to human participants and analyzes their response. In this dilemma, one needs to decide whether they would distribute COVID-19 vaccines only to members of a high-risk group (follow the enforced rule) or, in selected cases, administer the vaccine to a few social influencers (break the rule), which might yield an overall greater benefit to society. The results of the empirical study suggest a relationship between stakeholder utilities and pro-social rule breaking (PSRB), which neither deontological nor utilitarian ethics completely explain. Finally, the paper discusses the design characteristics of an ethical agent capable of PSRB and the future research directions on PSRB in the AI realm. We hope that this will inform the design of future AI agents, and their decision-making behaviour.

Creative Action at a Distance: A Conceptual Framework for Embodied Performance With Robotic Actors

Acting, stand-up and dancing are creative, embodied performances that nonetheless follow a script. Unless experimental or improvised, the performers draw their movements from much the same stock of embodied schemas. A slavish following of the script leaves no room for creativity, but active interpretation of the script does. It is the choices one makes, of words and actions, that make a performance creative. In this theory and hypothesis article, we present a framework for performance and interpretation within robotic storytelling. The performance framework is built upon movement theory, and defines a taxonomy of basic schematic movements and the most important gesture types. For the interpretation framework, we hypothesise that emotionally-grounded choices can inform acts of metaphor and blending, to elevate a scripted performance into a creative one. Theory and hypothesis are each grounded in empirical research, and aim to provide resources for other robotic studies of the creative use of movement and gestures.

Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter

Doctors and nurses in these weeks and months are busy in the trenches, fighting against a new invisible enemy: Covid-19. Cities are locked down and civilians are besieged in their own homes, to prevent the spreading of the virus. War-related terminology is commonly used to frame the discourse around epidemics and diseases. The discourse around the current epidemic makes use of war-related metaphors too, not only in public discourse and in the media, but also in the tweets written by non-experts of mass communication. We hereby present an analysis of the discourse around #Covid-19, based on a large corpus tweets posted on Twitter during March and April 2020. Using topic modelling we first analyze the topics around which the discourse can be classified. Then, we show that the WAR framing is used to talk about specific topics, such as the virus treatment, but not others, such as the effects of social distancing on the population. We then measure and compare the popularity of the WAR frame to three alternative figurative frames (MONSTER, STORM and TSUNAMI) and a literal frame used as control (FAMILY). The results show that while the FAMILY frame covers a wider portion of the corpus, among the figurative frames WAR, a highly conventional one, is the frame used most frequently. Yet, this frame does not seem to be apt to elaborate the discourse around some aspects involved in the current situation. Therefore, we conclude, in line with previous suggestions, a plethora of framing options—or a metaphor menu—may facilitate the communication of various aspects involved in the Covid-19-related discourse on the social media, and thus support civilians in the expression of their feelings, opinions and beliefs during the current pandemic.

Yang-Yang thermodynamics on an atom chip

We investigate the behavior of a weakly interacting nearly one-dimensional trapped Bose gas at finite temperature. We perform in situ measurements of spatial density profiles and show that they are very well described by a model based on exact solutions obtained using the Yang-Yang thermodynamic formalism, in a regime where other, approximate theoretical approaches fail. We use Bose-gas focusing [I. Shvarchuck, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 270404 (2002)] to probe the axial momentum distribution of the gas and find good agreement with the in situ results.

[Quality assurance in roentgen diagnosis. 1996 results and problems from the viewpoint of the Medical Section in accordance with ordinance 16 of the roentgen regulation of the Saxony Regional Medical Group]

The "Arztliche Stelle gemäss RöV" was established in Saxony in 1992. Structure and results of quality assurance in radiological diagnostics are described briefly. Quality checks delivered acceptable results for the majority of X-ray devices. Typical errors are shown and explained by using some X-ray pictures.