1 Introduction
2 Background
Themes | Possible questions toraise |
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1. Agency | How autonomous are and should AI robots be? Should AI robots be capable of moral agency just like humans are? In what contexts in agri-food would the development and use of artificial moral agency (AMA) be valuable/required/acceptable? What ethical standards should guide the behaviour and choices of such a robot and should be built into it? |
2. Moral status of robots | Are AI robots with a high level of intelligence worthy of dignity and moral consideration? What capacities do they need to have to be worthy of moral consideration? And what would this imply? Would the ascription of rights to them entail for their position in the social world, for example with respect to their role in the workforce? |
3. Responsibility and liability | Can agri-food robots be considered as ‘responsible’ agents? What (individual; social) approach to responsibility is most appropriate when considering AI robots in agriculture? Can robots be considered responsible, or are (only) the robot-developers or users’ appropriate responsible agents? What should responsibility distribution/sharing look like when using agricultural AI robots? And (how) does the concept of liability (for damage/accidents) apply to robots and/or to (collaborations) of people? |
3. Quality of relationships | What is the value of robot-human relationships in agri-food? What kind of robot-human relationships would we like to come about in various agri-food contexts? What impacts do robots have on the well-being of other sentient beings (animals, humans)? What impacts should it have? What about the safety of robots? |
5. Employment and labour | What is the value of the effects of AI robots on various labour contexts in the agri-food sector? What is the value of its effects on the job market? How ought these effects to be evaluated with respect to justice and fairness ideals? |
6. Accessibility and Benefit Distribution | What are benefits of AI robots? Where do AI robots offer benefits and to whom? What kind of farms will it benefit, and which will not? What is the just distribution of the benefits? |
7. Good farming | What does ‘good farming’ mean? (How) can AI robots contribute to it? What are effects of the use of robots on the farm and how is/should this be evaluated? (for example, with respect to the level and quality of production, (flexibility of) choice of crops, physical burden of work, leisure, social relationships of the farmer on and around the farm) |
8. Animal Welfare | What is the meaning of animal welfare? (How) can AI robots contribute to animal welfare (livestock and wild animals)? How should we weigh the interests of animals in relation to the interests of human beings? |
9. Environmental sustainability | What is sustainable farming? (How) can AI robots contribute to realising it? How should environmental concerns be evaluated in relation to other (economic) concerns of the farmer? Do AI robots also produce environmental harms? What kind of environmental harms, resulting from these robots, is deemed acceptable, and why? |
10. Data sharing | What are preconditions for trust in data sharing? What data should be open or shared with whom? In what ways do farmers and other stakeholders in the value-chain become vulnerable because of data sharing? What constitutes data misuse? Who is the owner of data or datasets? What privacy issues does sharing of farm data raise? |
11. Distribution of power | What effects will AI robotics have on the distribution of power in society, especially among actors in agri-food? What is the value of these effects, with respect to (a) public goals, (b) market competition, (c) dependencies between market actors? What constitutes misuse of power and how can it be prevented or its effects mitigated? What is a fair/just distribution of power? |
3 Methods
Arable | Food processing | Horticulture | Livestock | |
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Experts involved in or influencing the end-user context | ||||
Grower or Farmer | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
R&D manager robot using company | 2 | |||
Advisor | 1 | 2 | 4 | |
Experts involved in developing and/or making AI robots | ||||
R&D employee commercial robot or machine developing company | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
Researcher | 1 | |||
Business developer | 1 | |||
Experts who have a general policy and/or regulation-oriented perspective | ||||
Branch organization | 2 | |||
Work safety officer | 1 | |||
Employee insurance company | 1 | |||
National policy maker | 1 | |||
Total number of respondents | 33 |
3.1 Qualitative analysis
4 Results
4.1 Autonomy and sociability of robots
4.1.1 Degree of autonomy and human dependence on robots
“If that would be needed to check the performance of the robot, then it would be a bad robot. I wouldn’t want to have it. It is not for nothing that it is called ‘a robot’. It should be able to function independently.” (Arable farmer)
“I think that if you want there to be autonomy for robots, then you have to get clear on the question: how should we understand each other? (..) With a flashing light a robot says: ‘I am driving and move aside otherwise I crush you’. But when people think that is unacceptable, they will say: ‘you don’t belong in my society’. So, if you want them to be capable, then the robot should be more intelligent, or more understanding in a social way, then just turning on a flashing light.” (Robot developer, food processing)
4.1.2 Tolerance/acceptance of mistakes
“Look when I weed with humans and they try to pull out a weed, then they sometimes accidentally pull out an onion that stands next to it (..) So you will always tolerate some crop damage, and that will always be acceptable to some extent. You will always have to take into account that [the robot] will also take out some crops, yes.” (Arable farmer)
4.1.3 Safety and communicative skills
“(..) the most efficient manure robot would always go on. (...) If something stands in the way, just drive over it or against it. (...) From a safety perspective I would say; as soon as something moves in the surrounding, the robot should stand still. Then you will probably have the safest robot. I think such a robot won’t be of much value for the horticulturist, or for the farmer, but it is very safe.” (Representative of insurance company)
4.1.4 Responsibility and accountability for damage
“If you think about responsibility and safety: on the one hand you have more means to build in safety, to program that. On the other hand, you lose the human consideration and responsibility. That shifts to the machine. (...) Obviously, it means less risk because you enter a programmed world in which you can ban risks from a technological perspective, so to say. But (..) there is an increase of [juridical] risk because you enter a grey area between responsibility and autonomy. We enter a period in which that is less clear.” (Representative from insurance company)
“Technically it is already possible to make robots more autonomous than they are now. But often developers choose not to. For what happens if there’s an accident? If the robot hurts someone, or an animal, or if, if it breaks a barn or a greenhouse or something. To avoid trouble, they make the robot depend on a human being, a user. That way this user is responsible for whatever happens. Without the human it is, it would be quite unclear...unclear who should be blamed, and who should pay.” (Researcher, horticulture)
4.2 Relationships of robots to society at large
4.2.1 Public perception of robots in agri-food
“In Japan people (..) like it when food is produced in a very clean environment, like a laboratory, and they don’t mind it when robots do the harvesting. But here in Europe some people think that a tomato should grow on soil and should be harvested by human hands, not by robot hands. Acceptance might be an issue here, yes, but not in Japan.” (Innovation advisor, horticulture)
“You can automate a lot, but where is the human scale, the naturalness and the contact with the animal? That sort of thing, that is of course very important to the consumer, because they almost start to compare it with their own pet.” (Advisor, livestock)
“You see, especially when a farmer sprays for weeds, you have an enormous tractor and an enormous spray arm behind it with a width of sometimes even 32 meters. An enormous thing, you know, and all kinds of fluids come out. Well, for a citizen, it is poison what comes out of it. So, you see an enormous machine with poison, and you think, well something is going completely wrong here. So, I think, if you can make it small, lower to the ground and less scary (..) that will help tremendously.” (Branch organisation)
4.2.2 Public interest in environmental sustainability
”I am actually hoping that in 10 or 15 years we can say that the evolvement of robots has been booming and that we will have more, but lighter and smaller machines driving across the field and that this will reduce soil compaction and improve the quality and health of the soil.” (Cultivation consultant, arable)
4.2.3 Animal health and wellbeing
“I suppose that in the development of the manure hoover, research has been done, but I am not aware of the results. How much percent this has improved the claw health, but well in my eyes this is settled: the cleaner the floor, the less claw disease you have, or the less chance there is that claw problems grow into a real problem. Yes, that is in my head, but I do not know the exact numbers.” (Robot developer, livestock)
“...you need to respect animal behaviour. That to me seems very important, so if... if you want to be coercive or if you disrespect the intrinsic value of the animal, or how you want to call it. Yes, then you are crossing a line. And you should look for (..) a way, and answer to ‘how should I connect to normal animal behaviour?’ (Advisor, livestock).
4.3 Labour relationships in businesses
4.3.1 Business sustainability
“In the background (..) the economic sustainability of the business always plays a role: the business should be able to survive over time. That is why farmers are forced to think about what their business model actually is and why they earn money.” (Robot developer, arable)
“I am very interested in the harvesting robot, yes. (..) The large efflux of labourers is a burden to us. Until now we have been able to find new people, but you have to first teach them how to do the job and there are costs attached to that. And we see that people don’t stay very long, so after a little while you have to do the same thing again. (..) So you would actually like to keep them longer, but then you have to give them a contract which is not very attractive financially speaking and therefore people are free to go and they don’t show commitment, and therefore the constant availability of labourers is quite, well, unreliable.” (Grower, horticulture)
4.3.2 Exploitation vs fair access to labour
“Robots are taking over jobs that nobody wants to do. This will make everybody happy. [Interviewer: And what will the low-skilled labourer coming from Moldova think about that?] Nothing. He will happily stay at home and look for a different job.” (R&D advisor, horticulture)
“Yes, you will expel labour. But what kind of labour do you expel? Yes, and where did that labour come from? Was it a sustainable model? We of course see all results of Corona in slaughterhouses at the moment. In what kind of way people are housed and with what kind of salary they are sent home, that is not great. So, do you want to maintain that kind of labour in that way in the Netherlands?” (Business developer, food processing robot)
“At present, horticulture is very labour intensive. Are we going to tell all these hard-working people: ‘well, from now on we don’t need you anymore?’ I happen to think this is problematic.” (Branch organisation, horticulture)
4.3.3 Craftsmanship, continuity and flexibility
“If you look at the developments in indoor farming, then you see that the role of the grower becomes less important. It is possible to automate the environment and then you see that the automation also takes the decisions about the climate in the greenhouse. So, the role of the grower will turn more and more into the role of a manager, it is no longer someone who deals with plants and executes daily decisions in a greenhouse. (..) the knowledge of growers is grasped in models and then the role of the grower will change too.” (Advisor, horticulture)
“And right now, there is training for a specific cabbage so to say. That model is put in the machine and as long as the cabbage looks the same within margins than it is fine, but unfortunately agri-food products are not like that. One variety is slightly different than others and (…) all kinds of circumstances outside on the field make that the product is different each time (...). At this moment, these robots handle that insufficiently.” (Business developer, food processing robot)
“It would be best if all tomatoes would grow more or less at the same height and if a robot could harvest them by gently ticking against the plant and catching the fruit in a little sack. You see, tomatoes are soft, so you don’t want the robot to crush them, and therefore it is better if the robot does not pick them but catches them in a sack. But not all plants let go of the fruit when you tick the plant. (…) So, a tomato plant breeding company is now trying to breed a kind of plant that, well, fits perfectly with our robot and lets go of the fruit very easily. So, then you have a perfect fit. The only disadvantage is that once you have the perfect plant for your robot, it becomes very difficult to start growing something else. That’s the disadvantage: you lose flexibility.” (R&D advisor, horticulture)
4.4 Cloud relationships to robots
4.4.1 Accessibility of robots
4.4.2 Data security and trust in data sharing
“Yes you’re dealing with data security and you really have to take that into account. You need to have an agreement with that livestock farmer that in fact you are allowed to use those data.” (Robot manufacturer, livestock)
“I think that if you would have all that data, that you could do much better. That you would be able to steer what goes into that cow, or what goes into that group of cows. When you can understand the relationship between what goes in, the feed, and what comes out of the cow, the milk, then you would be able to steer better.”(Robot developer, livestock)
5 Discussion
Values | Ethical questions | Related to theme in the literature |
---|---|---|
Autonomy and sociability of robots | ||
Autonomy | What is the degree of autonomy a particular robot should be allowed to have? Should the technical possibility to make robots independent be used? | Agency |
Equality | Should a robot acquire the same abilities and qualities as human workers? Does a particular robot deserve to be treated in the same way as human beings? | Moral status of robots |
Human rights | Should a robot have rights? | Moral status of robots |
Safety | To what extent are risks introduced by a robot on the workfloor acceptable? | Employment & labour |
Sociability | How sociable should a robot be? What characteristics should it minimally have (in terms of communication, politeness, looks) in order to function in social interactions with people in agri-food environments? | Quality of relationships |
Tolerance | What level of tolerance is due to robots vs humans with respect to the mistakes they make? | Quality of relationships |
Responsibility | Who is responsible (and liable) for accidents and damage resulting from robots? How should responsibility be distributed among robots, robot developers and users? | Responsibility & liability |
Relationships of robots to society at large | ||
Nostalgia/conservatism | What is the value of traditional craftsmanship vs robotic craftsmanship? In what way should food be produced? What is the added value of humans producing food as opposed to robots? | Good farming/food production |
Societal acceptance/trust | (How) should societal trust in food production be preserved/fostered? | Quality of relationships |
Sustainable environment | Should we require robots to make food production and processing more sustainable? | Environment |
Animal health and wellbeing | What contribution should robots make to animal health and wellbeing? Should robots preserve it, improve it? And what approach to animal welfare do we choose? | Animal Welfare |
Labour relationships in businesses | ||
Business sustainability | What is a desirable/acceptable direction into which robots should help agri-food businesses to develop? | Good farming |
Value of labour: craftsmanship, continuity and flexibility | What is the value of labour? (How) should robots contribute to it? Should businesses become dependent on of the performance of robots? To what extent should flexibility of food production be preserved/fostered? | Employment and labour |
Fairness | What does a fair labour market require (in the Netherlands/worldwide) with respect to the availability/accessibility of labour? | Employment and labour |
Health, wellbeing, safety | What does the health and safety of labourers require? What requirements does this impose on the performance of robots? | Employment and labour |
Efficiency | Is there a limit to the efficiency of food production that we should try to realize with robots? What is the right balance between efficiency and other values (such as, enjoyment of labour, flexibility, fairness)? | Good farming (or food production) |
Cloud relationship to robots | ||
Accessibility of robots | Should the benefits of robotics be accessible to all? What does this mean for the way robots should be designed and how they should function? (e.g. should they be connected to the internet, which is not available everywhere? Should they be expensive or cheap? How much skills needed?) | Accessibility and Benefit Distribution |
Control (connection to business sustainability) | Should robots be connected to larger digital systems and serve farm management? What goals should they help bring about? And who should be in charge of the farm? | Good farming (or food production) |
Data security | Who should/should not have access to data collected by robots? What data should be accessible to whom? What data should be protected? | Data sharing |
Trust in data sharing | With whom should data be shared? Who should have the right to benefit from data collected by a robot? | Data sharing |