Engineering ethical behaviors in autonomous industrial cyber-physical human systems

Abstract

This paper addresses the engineering of the ethical behaviors of autonomous industrial cyber-physical human systems in the context of Industry 4.0. An ethical controller is proposed to be embedded into these autonomous systems, to enable their successful integration in the society and its norms. This proposed controller that integrates machine ethics is realized through three main strategies that utilize two ethical paradigms, namely deontology, and consequentialism. These strategies are triggered according to the type of event sensed and the state of the autonomous industrial cyber-physical human systems, their combination being potentially unknown or posing ethical dilemmas. Two case studies are investigated, that deal with a fire emergency, and two different contexts i.e. one with an autonomous train, and one with an autonomous industrial plant, are discussed to illustrate the controller utilization. The case studies demonstrate the potential benefits and exemplify the need to integrate ethical behaviors in autonomous industrial cyber-physical human systems already at the design phase. The proposed approach, use cases, and discussions make evident the need to address ethical aspects in new efforts to engineer industrial systems in the context of Industry 4.0.

Symbiosis with artificial intelligence via the prism of law, robots, and society

“…Robots taking autonomous decisions will result in unavoidable accidents and harming of humans and society at large intentionally or unintentionally (Pagallo 2013;Hallevy 2010). The decision making processes robots utilize need to understand and comply with existing civil and criminal law and safeguard against any harm that could be caused to humans (Bertolini 2020;Karnouskos 2020b;Trentesaux and Karnouskos 2021). An attempt to tackle the safeguarding aspect is illustrated by science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who drafted three main laws that each robot should obey and cannot be bypassed.…”

“…there is no consensus on what guidelines a robot should follow. Such aspects have been discussed in specific emergency scenarios (Trentesaux and Karnouskos 2021) or domains (Eidenmueller 2017) such as health (Vandemeulebroucke et al 2019), space (Martin andFreeland 2021), military (de Swarte et al 2019) etc. but not in a multi-domain way where AGI robots are expected to be active and also do not cover aspects of intentional deception by robots (Danaher 2020).…”

Enhancing engineering ethics education (EEE) for green intelligent manufacturing: Implementation performance evaluation of core mechanism of green intelligence EEE

“…The emergence of engineering ethics problems is often caused by the lack of ethical awareness, the insufficient estimation of the consequences of engineering activities, the conflict of interests of all parties in the project, the weak consciousness of natural social responsibility, and other factors, which all come from the subject of engineering practice (Yin and Zhang, 2021 ). Engineers who are direct participants in engineering practice often face ethical dilemmas, and the work they do, such as designing, planning, and managing infrastructure, as well as designing materials and systems, involves risk (Trentesaux and Karnouskos, 2022 ). Engineers, therefore, have a high degree of responsibility to society and stakeholders.…”

Creating Meaningful Intelligence for Decision-Making by Modelling Complexities of Human Influence: Review and Position

“…Ethical issues, in particular, are of key importance, since automation and autonomy rely on machines capabilities to operate within realms that until now were exclusive to humans (e.g. production planning, operative safety) [41]. Technologies used to achieve the goals of Industry 4.0 can be distributed in three main group: cognition-enhancing technologies (cognitive computing, computer vision, AI, Big Data, cloud computing); interaction technologies (physical human-machine interfaces, exoskeletons, augmented reality); and sensorial technologies (Internet of Things, activity trackers, wearables).…”