Getting machines to do your dirty work: Getting machines to do your dirty work: T. Francis, T. Karhu.

Autonomous systems are machines that can alter their behavior without direct human oversight or control. How ought we to program them to behave? A plausible starting point is given by the Reduction to Acts Thesis, according to which we ought to program autonomous systems to do whatever a human agent...

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Published in:Philosophical Studies Vol. 182; no. 1; pp. 121 - 136
Main Authors: Francis, Tomi, Karhu, Todd
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jan2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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          Francis, Tomi
          Karhu, Todd
        affil:
          https://ror.org/052gg0110 Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford, Trajan House, Mill Street, OX2 0DJ, Oxford, UK
          https://ror.org/0220mzb33 The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London, Somerset House East Wing, WC2R 2LS, London, UK
      su:
        Machinery
        Artificial intelligence
        Ethics
        Computer programming
        Automation
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        subj:
          Machinery
          Artificial intelligence
          Ethics
          Computer programming
          Automation
      keyword:
        AI ethics
        Autonomous systems
        Decomposition test
        Identified vs statistical lives
        Information and Computing Sciences Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
        Rational irrationality
      ab: Autonomous systems are machines that can alter their behavior without direct human oversight or control. How ought we to program them to behave? A plausible starting point is given by the Reduction to Acts Thesis, according to which we ought to program autonomous systems to do whatever a human agent ought to do in the same circumstances. Although the Reduction to Acts Thesis is initially appealing, we argue that it is false: it is sometimes permissible to program a machine to do something that it would be wrong for a human to do. We advance two main arguments for this claim. First, the way an autonomous system will behave can be known in advance. This knowledge can indirectly affect the behavior of other agents, while the same may not be true at the time the system actually executes its programming. Second, a lack of knowledge of the identities of the victims and beneficiaries can provide a justification during the programming phase that would be unavailable to an agent at the time the autonomous system executes its programming.
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