The Nature, Importance, and Difficulty of Machine Ethics

Moor, James H.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511978036.003

Cited by 108 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Among the pioneers of the Machine Ethics field are Wallach and Allen (2009), Anderson and Anderson (2007), Floridi and Sanders (2004), Moor (2006), Magnani (2007), Scheutz (2002), Sullins (2006), and Edgar (1997). The most prominent representatives of Engineering Ethics within Computing include Moor (1985), Mitcham (1995), Bynum and Rogerson (2004), Johnson (1994), Johnson and Miller (2006).…”

Section: Ethics Of Artifactually Intelligent Robotic Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The answer to that problem is sought within Artificial Morality (Allen et al 2005(Allen et al , 2006Wallach and Allen 2009). Numerous interesting questions arise when the issue of morally responsible artificial agents is addressed by defining autonomous ethical rules of their behaviourquestions addressed by Moor (2006) within the field of Machine Ethics. Even though the implementation of ethics in machines will result in artifactual ethical behaviour, the Machine Ethics 2 itself is developed and implemented by humans whose ethics are regulated by Engineering Ethics, specifically Computing Ethics/Computer Ethics.…”

Section: Robots In Close Collaboration With Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Robots: ethical by design

Dodig-Crnković

Çürüklü

2011

Ethics Inf Technol

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Among ethicists and engineers within robotics there is an ongoing discussion as to whether ethical robots are possible or even desirable. We answer both of these questions in the positive, based on an extensive literature study of existing arguments. Our contribution consists in bringing together and reinterpreting pieces of information from a variety of sources. One of the conclusions drawn is that artifactual morality must come in degrees and depend on the level of agency, autonomy and intelligence of the machine. Moral concerns for agents such as intelligent search machines are relatively simple, while highly intelligent and autonomous artifacts with significant impact and complex modes of agency must be equipped with more advanced ethical capabilities. Systems like cognitive robots are being developed that are expected to become part of our everyday lives in future decades. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that their behaviour is adequate. In an analogy with artificial intelligence, which is the ability of a machine to perform activities that would require intelligence in humans, artificial morality is considered to be the ability of a machine to perform activities that would require morality in humans. The capacity for artificial (artifactual) morality, such as artifactual agency, artifactual responsibility, artificial intentions, artificial (synthetic) emotions, etc., come in varying degrees and depend on the type of agent. As an illustration, we address the assurance of safety in modern High Reliability Organizations through responsibility distribution. In the same way that the concept of agency is generalized in the case of artificial agents, the concept of moral agency, including responsibility, is generalized too. We propose to look at artificial moral agents as having functional responsibilities within a network of distributed responsibilities in a socio-technological system. This does not take away the responsibilities of the other stakeholders in the system, but facilitates an understanding and regulation of such networks. It should be pointed out that the process of development must assume an evolutionary form with a number of iterations because the emergent properties of artifacts must be tested in real world situations with agents of increasing intelligence and moral competence. We see this paper as a contribution to the macro-level Requirement Engineering through discussion and analysis of general requirements for design of ethical robots.

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Section: Ethics Of Artifactually Intelligent Robotic Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Robots In Close Collaboration With Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robots: ethical by design

Dodig-Crnković

Çürüklü

2011

Ethics Inf Technol

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“…However, we will not pursue these controversies here. Basically, we agree with Moor (2006) that there are at least four distinct levels in which AAs can have an ''ethical impact,'' even if we cannot attribute moral accountability to AAs themselves and even if AAs do not qualify as (full) moral agents. 3 We use the standard definition of an artificial agent introduced by Subrahamanian, et al (2000, p. 4), which easily enables us to define a multi-agent system as well.…”

Section: Part I: Trust and Artificial Agentsmentioning

confidence: 72%

Trust and multi-agent systems: applying the “diffuse, default model” of trust to experiments involving artificial agents

Buechner

Tavani

2010

Ethics Inf Technol

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We argue that the notion of trust, as it figures in an ethical context, can be illuminated by examining research in artificial intelligence on multi-agent systems in which commitment and trust are modeled. We begin with an analysis of a philosophical model of trust based on Richard Holton's interpretation of P. F. Strawson's writings on freedom and resentment, and we show why this account of trust is difficult to extend to artificial agents (AAs) as well as to other non-human entities. We then examine Margaret Urban Walker's notions of ''default trust'' and ''default, diffuse trust'' to see how these concepts can inform our analysis of trust in the context of AAs. In the final section, we show how ethicists can improve their understanding of important features in the trust relationship by examining data resulting from a classic experiment involving AAs.

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“…Here I follow Moor (2006) who distinguishes between four types of moral agency, two of which are relevant for our purposes: (1) explicit ethical agents and (2) full ethical agents. AMAs falling into these two categories have the distinctive features that, not only can they act out in the world, but they can do so with little to no human supervision.…”

Section: Virtuous Artificial Moral Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Out of character: on the creation of virtuous machines

Tonkens

2012

Ethics Inf Technol

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The Nature, Importance, and Difficulty of Machine Ethics

Cited by 108 publications

References 2 publications

Robots: ethical by design

Robots: ethical by design

Trust and multi-agent systems: applying the “diffuse, default model” of trust to experiments involving artificial agents

Out of character: on the creation of virtuous machines

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