Ethical Preferences in the Digital World: The EXOSOUL Questionnaire

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to discuss the motivation and the methodology used to construct a survey that aims to gather data on the moral preferences of users in an ever-growing digital world, in order to implement an exoskeleton software (i.e. EXOSOUL) that will be able to protect and support the users in such a world. Even if we are more interested in presenting and discussing the methodology adopted, in Section 5 we present the preliminary results of the survey. In our society there is a growing and constant interaction between human agents and artificial agents, such as algorithms, robots, platforms, and ICT systems in general. The spread of these technologies poses new ethical challenges beyond the existing ones. This is for two main reasons. First, the amount of interactions between human agents and artificial ones involves a number of ethical aspects that is overwhelming. Secondly, and most importantly, the progressive self-sufficiency and autonomy that increasingly sophisticated systems are acquiring seem to deprive human beings of one of their most defining ethical aspects: the impact of systems’ autonomy with respect to human decisions and actions. In line with this perspective, the EXOSOUL multidisciplinary project has the goal of creating a software exoskeleton that helps users to interact with artificial agents according to their ethical preferences. In this work, we aim to investigate how to collect human agent’s ethical preferences. In Section 1 we present the EXOSOUL projects and in Section 2 the motivation for this paper. Section 3 and 4 illustrate the new approach, while in Section 5 we provide the preliminary results. Section 6 concludes and presents the work to be done in the future. In Section 1 we present the EXOSOUL project and in Section 2 the motivation for this paper. Section 3 and 4 illustrate the new approach, while in Section 5 we provide the preliminary results. Section 6 concludes and presents the work to be done in the future.