Abstract

Every new discovery in science and technology leads to use terms and expressions that form the basis of humans’ representations. In the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, the words are borrowed from the vocabulary of the living.The state-of-the-art shows that there is an intrinsic link between the cognitive process of the attribution of intentions to moving objects and machines and the agentive lexicon. Indeed, humans’ perception of movement impacts their representation of the world and the way that they talk about the world. On the other hand, natural language plays an important role in the way that humans represent the movements and actions of robots. Following a review of the main principles that explain how movement is decoded as well as encoded through natural language, I observe that the agentive lexicon imposes itself, regardless of the state of our beliefs about a possible robot intelligence.Thereupon, many roboticists are concerned about the lexicon of robotics, as they fear that the words used to describe robots create or at least, encourage, the confusion between the machines and the living. As the words of robotics are often considered by the roboticists as ambiguous, the agentive lexicon is analyzed under the general rules of the lexical ambiguity resolution. The results suggest that ambiguity is not at the basis of the problem of interpretation of the discourses in robotics and that the problematic carries on beyond the meaning of the words used to describe robots.Consequently, I assume that the relation between moving machines and language is not a problem of the logos but include also the ethos and the pathos. This observation is verified through the study of a corpus gathering public discourses and a series of speeches produced by roboticists and scientific journalists during a rhetorical experiment conducted at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie of Paris. Hence, I observe that the discourses in robotics fall under a matter of rhetoric in its whole and relate to one’s own conception of rationality.Finally, in order to engage a discussion on alternative rhetorical strategy in robotics, I consider the ancient and practical rhetorical exercice of ekphrasis as a tool to trigger the criteria of an adequate and accurate rhetorical style in the context of robotics. This means that I seek to discover the criteria of the discourse that prove to be useful for society as it allows roboticists and citizens to question and make decisions about concrete matters of robotics.