50 Ways to Kill a Robot (Lecture by Prof. Jennifer ROBERTSON)

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The idiom “50 Ways” in my title should not be taken as a literal metric. “Fifty” is a simply a metaphor for a number larger than a few. In his hit song, “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” (1975), Paul Simon provides six ways to leave. In this paper, I will review a number of ways to “kill” a robot together with some of the ways that robots “die.” Death here is broadly defined as the permanent ending of vital processes. I will also review how “deceased” robots are handled. My cultural area focus is primarily Japan and the United States. Both humans and robots are, in several respects, electrical entities, and so in my concluding remarks, I address the question of what happens to each after the electricity is out.

Lecture
Jennifer ROBERTSON (Tokyo College Affiliated Professor, Professor Emerita, University of Michigan)

Discussion
ASAMA Hajime (Project Professor, Tokyo College)

Q&A

Moderator
David TILT (Postdoctoral Fellow, Tokyo College)