Emotional Labor and the Problem of Exploitation in Roboticized Care Practices: Enriching the Framework of Care Centred Value Sensitive Design.

Care ethics has been advanced as a suitable framework for evaluating the ethical significance of assistive robotics. One of the most prominent care ethical contributions to the ethical assessment of assistive robots comes through the work of Aimee Van Wynsberghe, who has developed the Care-Centred Value-Sensitive Design framework (CCVSD) in order to incorporate care values into the design of assistive robots. Building upon the care ethics work of Joan Tronto, CCVSD has been able to highlight a number of ways in which care practices can undergo significant ethical transformations upon the introduction of assistive robots. In this paper, we too build upon the work of Tronto in an effort to enrich the CCVSD framework. Combining insights from Tronto's work with the sociological concept of emotional labor, we argue that CCVSD remains underdeveloped with respect to the impact robots may have on the emotional labor required by paid care workers. Emotional labor consists of the managing of emotions and of emotional bonding, both of which signify a demanding yet potentially fulfilling dimension of paid care work. Because of the conditions in which care labor is performed nowadays, emotional labor is also susceptible to exploitation. While CCVSD can acknowledge some manifestations of unrecognized emotional labor in care delivery, it remains limited in capturing the structural conditions that fuel this vulnerability to exploitation. We propose that the idea of privileged irresponsibility, coined by Tronto, helps to understand how the exploitation of emotional labor can be prone to happen in roboticized care practices.

Anticipatory gaps challenge the public governance of heritable human genome editing.

Considering public moral attitudes is a hallmark of the anticipatory governance of emerging biotechnologies, such as heritable human genome editing. However, such anticipatory governance often overlooks that future morality is open to change and that future generations may perform different moral assessments on the very biotechnologies we are trying to govern in the present. In this article, we identify an 'anticipatory gap' that has not been sufficiently addressed in the discussion on the public governance of heritable genome editing, namely, uncertainty about the moral visions of future generations about the emerging applications that we are currently attempting to govern now. This paper motivates the relevance of this anticipatory gap, identifying the challenges it generates and offering various recommendations so that moral uncertainty does not lead to governance paralysis with regard to human germline genome editing.

Navigating autonomy, privacy, and ageism in robot home care with aged users: A preliminary analysis of ROB-IN.

In this article, I propose an ethical analysis of assistive domestic robots for older users. In doing so, I illustrate my inquiry with the example of ROB-IN assistive robot. ROB-IN is a Spanish project which is devoted to developing a robot that will perform in the private home of nondependent, aged users. It is aimed to help people in their daily activities and contribute to appropriate health monitoring. One of their potentially most useful features is related to data gathering and sharing. For the inquiry on the ethical underpinnings of this case, I develop a framework for domestic assistive robots for competent older adults drawn on the ethics of care. I assess that this type of robots could be ethically appraised attending to their impact on the well-being and autonomy of users. I approach autonomy from a relational perspective, and I delve into the relationship between autonomy and well-being through the concept of paternalism. I argue that this type of assistive robots should never act paternalistically. Given ROB-IN great implications regarding privacy, I subsequently explore the ways in which the privacy of users should be respected in their interaction with assistive robots, focusing on the relation with autonomy and well-being. Lastly, I highlight the need for avoiding ageism. This investigation focuses on aged users, but it is suggested that the situation of caregivers should be also the object of further investigations.

[Scope and limits of the technologization of care: lessons from a pandemic.] / Alcance y límites de la tecnologización del cuidado: aprendizajes de una pandemia.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has been used to carry out numerous activities. These uses have often been poorly planned, as the urgency of the situation did not allow for careful considerations. Technology has helped us to maintain many aspects of life that the pandemic had done difficult; however, it has also brought some new problems, especially when it comes to situations of vulnerability and care settings. In this article we analyse the nature and use of technology in assistive and care settings during the pandemic, its basis, its scope, and its limitations. To do so, we study the specific case of the use of digital video-calling platforms during the forced isolations caused by the pandemic.

Durante la pandemia de la COVID-19 se ha hecho uso de la tecnología para llevar a cabo numerosas actividades. Estos usos han sido a menudo poco meditados, puesto que la urgencia de la situación no permitía una reflexión sostenida al respecto. La tecnología nos ha ayudado a mantener muchos aspectos de la vida que la pandemia había dificultado; sin embargo, también ha supuesto algunos nuevos problemas, especialmente cuando hablamos de situaciones de vulnerabilidad y entornos de cuidado. En este artículo evaluamos el carácter y uso de la tecnología en entornos asistenciales y de cuidados durante la pandemia, sus presupuestos, su alcance y sus limitaciones. Para ello analizamos el caso concreto del uso de plataformas digitales de videollamadas durante los aislamientos forzosos provocados por la pandemia.