La idea de vulnerabilidad está cada vez más presente en documentos normativos, jurídicos y éticos, de diversa índole. La literatura académica relativa al concepto es reciente y aún está en proceso de consolidación. En términos generales, se puede distinguir entre dos corrientes: la primera, que reflexiona sobre la «vulnerabilidad ontológica», compartida por todos los seres humanos; y la segunda, sobre la «vulnerabilidad social» o «situacional», generada en determinadas situaciones de injusticia u opresión específicas. En este artículo se presenta una aproximación general al uso del concepto de vulnerabilidad y a las versiones más destacadas de las últimas décadas. Asimismo, se reflexiona sobre la relación de la vulnerabilidad con tres ideas éticas clave: autonomía relacional, responsabilidad y cuidado. Se hace hincapié en la vertiente práctica de la reflexión, relativa al diseño de políticas públicas y otras herramientas de gobernanza democrática.

There is a growing debate on how to regulate and make responsible use of digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI). In an increasingly globalized scenario, power relations and inequalities between different countries and regions need to be addressed. While developed countries are leading the building of an ethical governance architecture for AI, in the so-called global south (e.g., countries with a post-colonial history, also called non-developing countries), their situation of vulnerability and dependence on northern domination leads them to import digital technology, capital and modes of organization from these developed countries. This imbalance, in the absence of an ethical reflection, can have a significantly negative impact on their already excluded, oppressed and discriminated populations. In this paper, we want to explore to what extent countries from the global south that import digital technology from developed countries may be affected if we do not take into account the need for multi-level and ethical global governance of AI from a human rights/democratic perspective. In particular, we want to address two problems that may arise: (a) Lack of governance capacity in southern populations resulting from their dependence from northern leadership on technological innovations and regulations, and (b) material and workforce extractivism inflicted by the northern countries on southern ones.

Transhumanism is a challenging movement that invites us to rethink what defines humanity, including what we value and regret the most about our existence. Vulnerability is a key concept that require thorough philosophical scrutiny concerning transhumanist proposals. Vulnerability can refer to a universal condition of human life (ontological vulnerability) or, rather, to the specific exposure to certain harms due to particular situations (social vulnerability). Even if we are all vulnerable in the first sense, there are also different sources and levels of vulnerability depending on concrete social circumstances. Recently, Michael Hauskeller (2019) argued about a fundamental incompatibility between transhumanism and vulnerability. He understands vulnerability as an existential category, linked to woundability and mortality. This idea is akin to ontological vulnerability, but it does not notice some important features of social vulnerability. On the other side, transhumanism is a complex and non-homogeneous movement. Here we distinguish between a strong and a weak version of transhumanism. We will propose that the salience of vulnerability is only diminished in the radical one, while a moderate version can reconcile vulnerability with human enhancement. Thus, vulnerability, a concept that has recently gained much importance as an anthropological category in contemporary ethics, is not necessarily at odds with any transhumanist project.

In this article, I propose an ethical analysis of assistive domestic robots for older users. In doing so, I illustrate my inquiry with the example of ROB‐IN assistive robot. ROB‐IN is a Spanish project which is devoted to developing a robot that will perform in the private home of nondependent, aged users. It is aimed to help people in their daily activities and contribute to appropriate health monitoring. One of their potentially most useful features is related to data gathering and sharing. For the inquiry on the ethical underpinnings of this case, I develop a framework for domestic assistive robots for competent older adults drawn on the ethics of care. I assess that this type of robots could be ethically appraised attending to their impact on the well‐being and autonomy of users. I approach autonomy from a relational perspective, and I delve into the relationship between autonomy and well‐being through the concept of paternalism. I argue that this type of assistive robots should never act paternalistically. Given ROB‐IN great implications regarding privacy, I subsequently explore the ways in which the privacy of users should be respected in their interaction with assistive robots, focusing on the relation with autonomy and well‐being. Lastly, I highlight the need for avoiding ageism. This investigation focuses on aged users, but it is suggested that the situation of caregivers should be also the object of further investigations.

La sororidad ha ganado protagonismo en los nuevos discursos feministas, en España y en el mundo. Mientras que en España se trata de un uso reciente, en otros momentos históricos del feminismo ya se han producido importantes reflexiones sobre el tema que pueden iluminar la comprensión del presente. La idea de sororidad que suele manejarse en la actualidad puede analizarse a través de varios componentes: la confianza en los testimonios de todas las mujeres, la apelación a lo emocional, a los cuidados y la vulnerabilidad compartida y la valoración de la unión entre las mujeres por encima de sus diferencias. La potencia política de la asociación entre las mujeres, sin embargo, no está exenta de problemas. Todos estos aspectos merecen un análisis detenido para poder construir un concepto de sororidad políticamente fructífero.

Social care robots (SCR) have come to the forefront of the ethical debate. While the possibility of robots helping us tackle the global care crisis is promising for some, others have raised concerns about the adequacy of AI-driven technologies for the ethically complex world of care. The robots do not seem able to provide the comprehensive care many people demand and deserve, at least they do not seem able to engage in humane, emotion-laden and significant care relationships. In this article, we will propose to focus the debate on a particularly relevant aspect of care: trust. We will argue that, to answer the question of whether SCR are ethically acceptable, we must first address another question, namely, whether they are trustworthy. To this end, we propose a three-level model of trust analysis: rational, motivational and personal or intimate. We will argue that some relevant forms of caregiving (especially care for highly dependent persons) require a very personal or intimate type of care that distinguishes it from other contexts. Nevertheless, this is not the only type of trust happening in care spaces. We will adduce that, while we cannot have intimate or highly personal relationships with robots, they are trustworthy at the rational and thin motivational level. The fact that robots cannot engage in some (personal) aspects of care does not mean that they cannot be useful in care contexts. We will defend that critical approaches to trusting SCR have been sustained by two misconceptions and propose a new model for analyzing their moral acceptability: sociotechnical trust in teams of humans and robots.