Chihyung Jeon

Whether to give rights to artificial intelligence (AI) and robots has been a sensitive topic since the European Parliament proposed advanced robots could be granted "electronic personalities." Numerous scholars who favor or disfavor its feasibility have participated in the debate. This paper presents an experiment (N=1270) that 1) collects online users' first impressions of 11 possible rights that could be granted to autonomous electronic agents of the future and 2) examines whether debunking co

Whether to give rights to artificial intelligence (AI) and robots has been a sensitive topic since the European Parliament proposed advanced robots could be granted "electronic personalities." Numerous scholars who favor or disfavor its feasibility have participated in the debate. This paper presents an experiment (N=1270) that 1) collects online users' first impressions of 11 possible rights that could be granted to autonomous electronic agents of the future and 2) examines whether debunking co

The Gyeongbu Highway, which connects Seoul and Busan in South Korea, symbolizes the ways in which the nation's agendas of industrialization, modernization, and unification were imagined, implemented, and challenged from the 1960s to the present. Without much public support for the highway construction project, President Park Chung Hee wanted to build it as expeditiously and inexpensively as possible, associating it with a fight against North Korean communism. Under these constraints, Korean civi

The Link Trainer is often described as the first successful attempt at what we now recognize as flight simulation and even virtual reality. Instead of asking how well the device simulated flight conditions, this article shows that what the Link Trainer simulated was not the conditions of the air, but rather the conditions of the cockpit that was gradually filled with flight instruments. The article also considers the Link Trainer as a cultural space in which shifting ideas about what it meant to

Regulating artificial intelligence (AI) has become necessary in light of its deployment in high-risk scenarios. This paper explores the proposal to extend legal personhood to AI and robots, which had not yet been examined through the lens of the general public. We present two studies ( N = 3,559) to obtain people’s views of electronic legal personhood vis-à-vis existing liability models. Our study reveals people’s desire to punish automated agents even though these entities are not recognized an

The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project (2003–5) was an ambitious urban initiative to restore a 5.8-kilometer stream in central Seoul by demolishing elevated highways and peeling back the decades-old concrete pavement. A massive civil engineering project in itself, the restoration work caused heated debates on whether it brought back “an environmentally friendly civic jewel” or resulted in a humongous “fish tank” with an artificial water supply and meticulously engineered vista. This article exam

The possibility of extending legal personhood to artificial intelligence (AI) and robots has raised many questions on how these agents could be held liable given existing legal doctrines. Intending to promote a broader discussion, we conducted a survey (N=3315) asking online users' impressions of electronic agents' liability. Results suggest the existence of what we call the punishment gap that refers to the public's demand to punish automated agents upon a legal offense, even though their punis

Abstract We analyze the use of Silbot – a “dementia-prevention robot” – in a regional health center in South Korea. From our on-site observation of the Silbot classes, we claim that the efficacy of the robot class relies heavily on the “strained collaboration” between the human instructor and the robot. “Strained collaboration” refers to the ways in which the instructor works with the robot, attempting to compensate for the robot’s functional limitation and social awkwardness. In bringing Silbot

The Special Investigation Commission on the 4/16 Sewol Ferry Disaster offers a case in which the process of disaster investigation becomes a part, even a continuation, of the disaster for which it is created to bring closure. Placing the investigation in a longer temporality reveals obscured historical factors that shaped the investigation and its aftermath in surprising and crucial ways. Throughout the highly politicized process of deciding to investigate, what and whom to investigate, and how,

Technical solutions are being presented for the healthcare and welfare of the aging population. One example is Hyodol, a robot developed for older adults living alone in South Korea. By offering various services such as religious chanting, dementia-prevention quizzes, and daily medication reminders, Hyodol is expected to serve as a companion for lonely older adults. This paper analyzes how the robotic care program for older adults is operating within the Korean public welfare system. Based on ou

From the early 1920s to the end of 1930s, US meteorologists implemented a program of weather observation flights by airplanes as a chief method of collecting data from the upper‐air. The seemingly well‐defined task of obtaining more weather data as quickly as possible posed serious technical and managerial challenges to the meteorologists, who struggled to fix both the transient air and the pilots’ risky weather flights. The relationship between meteorologists and pilots mediated through the rec

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2010.

What does the human look like in South Korea? This article identifies two different figurations of the human in contemporary South Korea: the alpha human and the Korean. The alpha human is a human imagined, shaped, and circulated on the network of technosciences and media; it is embraced by technoscientific researchers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and journalists. The alpha human’s defining characteristic is the extended longevity, or even immortality, made possible by the developments in biom