Should We Program Robotic Emotions from the Gender Perspective?

Abstract

Scientific research on robotic emotions has been increasingly developing for the last few years. It is presumed that in twenty five years’ time there will be robots with emotions capable of taking decisions. Therefore, it is important to determine if people should take into account gender when designing the development of this kind of robotic emotions. Moreover, the authors assume that nowadays there is no intelligence without emotions, which are the ones that ultimately help taking decisions. It is contended here that the emotional elements and features of human reasoning should be taken into account when designing the personality of robots. As has been shown in the last few years, the concept of gender is constructed by socio-cultural factors. Gender perspectives are increasingly being applied to different fields of knowledge. Indeed, and as recent feminist research has highlighted, technology is affected by gender relations. Technology in general has been traditionally considered as a sign of men’s power and masculinity defined in terms of technological capabilities. Nevertheless, current discourses have provided new definitions of technology, of gender identity and of what being human means. In the same way, definitions of gender also change with time, affected by technological developments. The present work aims at demonstrating that the gender perspective is indeed very useful when applied to the field of robotics. Specifically, and when dealing with complex decision-taking, it becomes necessary to analyse which managing activities women can better develop in order to apply them, together with other features, to the design of robotic emotions. The purpose is, then, to propose a robotic model that, after the inclusion of such emotional aspects, breaks with old constrained gender stereotypes and takes a rather liberating view. At the same time, such a proposal should enable researchers to get better results when creating robots capable of managing other robotic teams and taking complex decisions. In short, the authors seek to apply the gender perspective in the analysis of some emotional features to be taken into account before they are applied to the field of robotics. Should We Program Robotic Emotions from the Gender Perspective?