On the influence of symbols and myths in the responsibility ascription problem in roboethics - A roboticist’s perspective

Because of the increasing developments of humanoid robots, humans and robots are going to interact more and more often in the near future. Thus, the need for a well-defined ethical framework in which these interactions will take place is very acute. In this article, we will show why responsibility ascription is a key concept to understand today´s and tomorrow´s ethical issues related to human-robot interactions. By analyzing how the myths surrounding the figure of the robot in western societies have been built through centuries, we will be able to demonstrate that the question of responsibility ascription is biased in the sense that it assigns to autonomous robots a role that should be devoted to humans.