Why Machine Ethics?

Abstract

Machine ethics isn’t merely science fiction; it’s a topic that requires serious consideration, given the rapid emergence of increasingly complex autonomous software agents and robots. If there are clear limits in people ability to develop or manage AMAs, then need to turn their attention away from a false reliance on autonomous systems and toward more human intervention in computers and robots' decision-making processes. Many questions arise when people consider the challenge of designing computer systems that function as the equivalent of moral agents. Robotics and AI laboratories could become experimental centers for testing the applicability of decision making in artificial systems and the ethical viability of those decisions, as well as for testing the computational limits of common ethical theories. A central issue is whether there are mental faculties that might be difficult to simulate but that would be essential for true AI and machine ethics.