Perhaps it All Boils Down to Language: Relational Turns and Ethical Challenges in Human-Robot Interaction

This paper examines the ethical and legal challenges emerging from two significant relational turns in human-robot interaction. The first turn, from ontology to epistemology, emphasizes the relational and situational dynamics between humans and robots, raising concerns about the fragmentation of ethics and the destabilization of universal legal principles. The second turn repositions robots as instruments of human subjugation within systems of algorithmic governance, complicating the attribution of responsibility. Drawing on Derrida's notion of “the law” (droit), these challenges converge in the interplay between justice and language where traditional human-centric discourse struggles to address posthuman relationality.