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The purpose of this paper is to examine how robotics program developers perceived the role of emulation of human ethics when programming robots for use in educational settings. A purposive sampling of online robotics program developer professional sites which focused on the role of emulation of human ethics used when programming robots for use in educational settings was included in the study. Content related to robotics program developers’ perceptions on educational uses of robots and ethics were analyzed.

The design for this study was a qualitative summative content analysis. The researchers analyzed keywords related to a phenomenon. The phenomenon was the emulation of human ethics programmed in robots. Articles selected to be analyzed in this study were published by robotics program developers who focused on robots and ethics in the education. All articles analyzed in this study were posted online, and the public has complete access to the studies.

Robotics program developers viewed the importance of situational human ethics interpretations and implementations. To facilitate flexibility, robotics program developers programmed robots to search computer-based ethics related research, frameworks and case studies. Robotics program developers acknowledged the importance of human ethics, but they felt more flexibility was needed in the role of how classroom human ethical models were created, developed and used. Some robotic program developers expressed questions and concerns about the implementations of flexible robot ethical accountability levels and behaviors in the educational setting. Robotics program developers argued that educational robots were not designed or programmed to emulate human ethics.

One limitation of the study was 32 online, public articles written by robotics program designers analyzed through qualitative content analysis to find themes and patterns. In qualitative content analysis studies, findings may not be as generalizable as in quantitative studies. Another limitation was only a limited number of articles written by robotics programs existed which addressed robotics and emulation of human ethics in the educational setting.

The significance of this study is the need for a renewed global initiative in education to promote debates, research and on-going collaboration with scientific leaders on ethics and programming robots. The implication for education leaders is to provide ongoing professional development on the role of ethics in education and to create best practices for using robots in education to promote increased student learning and enhance the teaching process.

The implications of this study are global. All cultures will be affected by the robotics’ shift in how students are taught ethical decision making in the educational setting. Robotics program developers will create computational educational moral models which will replace archetypal educational ethics frameworks. Because robotics program developers do not classify robots as human, educators, parents and communities will continue to question the use of robots in educational settings, and they will challenge robotics ethical dilemmas, moral standards and computational findings. The examination of robotics program developers’ perspectives through different lens may help close the gap and establish a new understanding among all stakeholders.

Four university doctoral faculty members conducted this content analysis study. After discussions on robotics and educational ethics, the researchers discovered a gap in the literature on the use of robots in the educational setting and the emulation of human ethics in robots. Therefore, to explore the implications for educators, the researchers formed a group to research the topic to learn more about the topic. No personal gains resulted from the study. All research was original. All cultures will be affected by the robotics’ shift in how students are taught ethical decision making in the educational setting. Robotics program developers will create computational educational moral models which will replace archetypal educational ethics frameworks. Because robotics program developers do not classify robots as human, educators, parents and communities will continue to question the use of robots in educational settings, and they will challenge robotics ethical dilemmas, moral standards, and computational findings. The examination of robotics program developers’ perspectives through different lens may help close the gap and establish a new understanding among all stakeholders.

The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.

This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.

Computing ethics represents a long established, yet rapidly evolving, discipline that grows in complexity and scope on a near-daily basis. Therefore, to help understand some of that scope it is essential to incorporate a range of perspectives, from a range of stakeholders, on current and emerging ethical challenges associated with computer technology. This study aims to achieve this by using, a three-pronged, stakeholder analysis of Computer Science academics, ICT industry professionals, and citizen groups was undertaken to explore what they consider to be crucial computing ethics concerns. The overlap between these stakeholder groups are explored, as well as whether their concerns are reflected in the existing literature.

Data collection was performed using focus groups, and the data was analysed using a thematic analysis. The data was also analysed to determine if there were overlaps between the literature and the stakeholders’ concerns and attitudes towards computing ethics.

The results of the focus group analysis show a mixture of overlapping concerns between the different groups, as well as some concerns that are unique to each of the specific groups. All groups stressed the importance of data as a key topic in computing ethics. This includes concerns around the accuracy, completeness and representativeness of data sets used to develop computing applications. Academics were concerned with the best ways to teach computing ethics to university students. Industry professionals believed that a lack of diversity in software teams resulted in important questions not being asked during design and development. Citizens discussed at length the negative and unexpected impacts of social media applications. These are all topics that have gained broad coverage in the literature.

In recent years, the impact of ICT on society and the environment at large has grown tremendously. From this fast-paced growth, a myriad of ethical concerns have arisen. The analysis aims to shed light on what a diverse group of stakeholders consider the most important social impacts of technology and whether these concerns are reflected in the literature on computing ethics. The outcomes of this analysis will form the basis for new teaching content that will be developed in future to help illuminate and address these concerns.

The multi-stakeholder analysis provides individual and differing perspectives on the issues related to the rapidly evolving discipline of computing ethics.

The remarkable increase of sophistication of artificial intelligence in recent years has already led to its widespread use in martial applications, the potential of so-called “killer robots” ceasing to be a subject of fiction. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the consequences of the availability of lethal autonomous robots (LARs) on global peace.

Virtually without exception, the aforementioned potential of LARs has generated fear, as evidenced by a mounting number of academic articles calling for the ban on their development and deployment. An analysis of the existing ethical objections to LARs is used as a vehicle for their critique and the advancement of an alternative.

The presented analysis shows the contemporary thought to be deficient in philosophical rigour, these deficiencies leading to a different view, one favourable to the development of LARs.

The emergent thesis is that LARs can in fact be a force for peace, leading to fewer and less deadly wars.

The purpose of this study is to provide insights and guidance for practitioners in terms of ensuring rigorous ethical and moral conduct in artificial intelligence (AI) hiring and implementation.

The research employed two experimental designs and one pilot study to investigate the ethical and moral implications of different levels of AI implementation in the hospitality industry, the intersection of self-congruency and ethical considerations when AI replaces human service providers and the impact of psychological distance associated with AI on individuals' ethical and moral considerations. These research methods included surveys and experimental manipulations to gather and analyze relevant data.

Findings provide valuable insights into the ethical and moral dimensions of AI implementation, the influence of self-congruency on ethical considerations and the role of psychological distance in individuals’ ethical evaluations. They contribute to the development of guidelines and practices for the responsible and ethical implementation of AI in various industries, including the hospitality sector.

The study highlights the importance of exercising rigorous ethical-moral AI hiring and implementation practices to ensure AI principles and enforcement operations in the restaurant industry. It provides practitioners with useful insights into how AI-robotization can improve ethical and moral standards.

The study contributes to the literature by providing insights into the ethical and moral implications of AI service robots in the hospitality industry. Additionally, the study explores the relationship between psychological distance and acceptance of AI-intervened service, which has not been extensively studied in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the robot trends of the next generation.

This paper is divided into two sections: the key modern technology on which Europe's robotics industry has built its foundation is described. Then, the next key megatrends were analyzed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are technologies of major importance for the development of humanity. This time is mature for the evolution of industrial and service robots. The perception of robot use has changed from threading to aiding. The cost of mass production of technological devices is decreasing, while a rich set of enabling technologies is under development. Soft mechanisms, 5G and AI have enabled us to address a wide range of new problems. Ethics should guide human behavior in addressing this newly available powerful technology in the right direction.

The paper describes the impact of new technology, such as AI and soft robotics. The world of work must react quickly to these epochal changes to enjoy their full benefits.

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is leading to a job transformation within the service ecosystem in which issues related to AI governance principles may hinder the social sustainability of the sector. The relevance of AI startups in driving innovation has been recognized; thus, this paper aims to investigate whether and how AI startups may influence the sustainable social development (SSD) of the service sector.

An empirical study based on 24 in-depth interviews was conducted to qualitatively explore the perceptions of service sector facing AI policymakers, AI consultants and academics (n = 12), as well as AI startups (founders, AI developers; n = 12). An inductive coding approach was used to identify and analyze the data.

As part of a complex system, AI startups influence the SSD of the service sector in relation to other stakeholders’ contributions for the ethical deployment of AI. Four key factors influencing AI startups’ ability to contribute to the SSD of the service sector were identified: awareness of socioeconomic issues; fostering decent work; systematically applying ethics; and business model innovation.

This study proposes measures for service sector AI startups to promote collaborative efforts and implement managerial practices that adapt to their available resources.

This study develops original guidelines for startups that seek ethical development of beneficial AI in the service sector, building upon Ethics as a Service approach.

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.

Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.

The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.

The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.

To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.

Besides the direct physical health consequences, through social isolation COVID-19 affects a considerably larger share of consumers with deleterious effects for their psychological well-being. Two vulnerable consumer groups are particularly affected: older adults and children. The purpose of the underlying paper is to take a transformative research perspective on how social robots can be deployed for advancing the well-being of these vulnerable consumers and to spur robotic transformative service research (RTSR).

This paper follows a conceptual approach that integrates findings from various domains: service research, social robotics, social psychology and medicine.

Two key findings advanced in this paper are (1) a typology of robotic transformative service (i.e. entertainer, social enabler, mentor and friend) as a function of consumers' state of social isolation, well-being focus and robot capabilities and (2) a future research agenda for RTSR.

This paper guides service consumers and providers and robot developers in identifying and developing the most appropriate social robot type for advancing the well-being of vulnerable consumers in social isolation.

This study is the first to integrate social robotics and transformative service research by developing a typology of social robots as a guiding framework for assessing the status quo of transformative robotic service on the basis of which it advances a future research agenda for RTSR. It further complements the underdeveloped body of service research with a focus on eudaimonic consumer well-being.

Service robots are taking over the organizational frontline. Despite a recent surge in studies on this topic, extant works are predominantly conceptual in nature. The purpose of this paper is to provide valuable empirical insights by building on the attribution theory.

Two vignette-based experimental studies were employed. Data were collected from US respondents who were randomly assigned to scenarios focusing on a hotel’s reception service and restaurant’s waiter service.

Results indicate that respondents make stronger attributions of responsibility for the service performance toward humans than toward robots, especially when a service failure occurs. Customers thus attribute responsibility to the firm rather than the frontline robot. Interestingly, the perceived stability of the performance is greater when the service is conducted by a robot than by an employee. This implies that customers expect employees to shape up after a poor service encounter but expect little improvement in robots’ performance over time.

Robots are perceived to be more representative of a firm than employees. To avoid harmful customer attributions, service providers should clearly communicate to customers that frontline robots pack sophisticated analytical, rather than simple mechanical, artificial intelligence technology that explicitly learns from service failures.

Customer responses to frontline robots have remained largely unexplored. This paper is the first to explore the attributions that customers make when they experience robots in the frontline.