Building Moral Robots: Ethical Pitfalls and Challenges.

This paper examines the ethical pitfalls and challenges that non-ethicists, such as researchers and programmers in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, face when building moral machines. Whether ethics is "computable" depends on how programmers understand ethics in t...

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Published in:Science & Engineering Ethics Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 141 - 158
Main Author: Gordon, John-Stewart
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Feb2020
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Building Moral Robots: Ethical Pitfalls and Challenges.
      aug:
        au: Gordon, John-Stewart
        affil:
          Department of Philosophy and Social Critique, Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas Magnus University, V. Putvinskio g. 23 (R 403), 44243, Kaunas, Lithuania
          Research Cluster for Applied Ethics, Faculty of Law, Vytautas Magnus University, V. Putvinskio g. 23 (R 403), 44243, Kaunas, Lithuania
      su:
        Ethical problems
        Computer programmers
        Computer science
        Artificial intelligence
        Robots
        Ethics
      sug:
        subj:
          Ethical problems
          Computer programmers
          Computer science
          Artificial intelligence
          Robots
          Ethics
      keyword:
        Ethical expertise
        Full ethical agents
        Moral machines
        Moral pluralism
        Programming ethics
      ab: This paper examines the ethical pitfalls and challenges that non-ethicists, such as researchers and programmers in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, face when building moral machines. Whether ethics is "computable" depends on how programmers understand ethics in the first place and on the adequacy of their understanding of the ethical problems and methodological challenges in these fields. Researchers and programmers face at least two types of problems due to their general lack of ethical knowledge or expertise. The first type is so-called rookie mistakes, which could be addressed by providing these people with the necessary ethical knowledge. The second, more difficult methodological issue concerns areas of peer disagreement in ethics, where no easy solutions are currently available. This paper examines several existing approaches to highlight the ethical pitfalls and challenges involved. Familiarity with these and similar problems can help programmers to avoid pitfalls and build better moral machines. The paper concludes that ethical decisions regarding moral robots should be based on avoiding what is immoral (i.e. prohibiting certain immoral actions) in combination with a pluralistic ethical method of solving moral problems, rather than relying on a particular ethical approach, so as to avoid a normative bias.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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