Robot Ethics 2.0

Abstract

As a game-changing technology, robotics naturally will create ripple effects through society. Some of them may become tsunamis. So it’s no surprise that “robot ethics”—the study of these effects on ethics, law, and policy—has caught the attention of governments, industry, and the broader society, especially in the past several years. Since our first book on the subject in 2012, a groundswell of concern has emerged, from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots to the Campaign Against Sex Robots. Among other bizarre events, a robot car has killed its driver, and a kamikaze police robot bomb has killed a sniper. Given these new and evolving worries, we now enter the second generation of the debates—<italic>robot ethics 2.0</italic>. This edited volume is a one-stop authoritative resource for the latest research in the field, which is often scattered across academic journals, books, media articles, reports, and other channels. Without presuming much familiarity with either robotics or ethics, this book helps to make the discussion more accessible to policymakers and the broader public, as well as academic audiences. Besides featuring new use-cases for robots and their challenges—not just robot cars, but also space robots, AI, and the internet of things (as massively distributed robots)—we also feature one of the most diverse group of researchers on the subject for truly global perspectives.