Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong
Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen
Abstract
The human‐built environment is increasingly being populated by artificial agents that, through artificial intelligence (AI), are capable of acting autonomously. The software controlling these autonomous systems is, to‐date, “ethically blind” in the sense that the decision‐making capabilities of such systems does not involve any explicit moral reasoning. The title Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong refers to the need for these increasingly autonomous systems (robots and software bots) to become capable of factoring ethical and moral considerations into their decision making. The n ... More
The human‐built environment is increasingly being populated by artificial agents that, through artificial intelligence (AI), are capable of acting autonomously. The software controlling these autonomous systems is, to‐date, “ethically blind” in the sense that the decision‐making capabilities of such systems does not involve any explicit moral reasoning. The title Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong refers to the need for these increasingly autonomous systems (robots and software bots) to become capable of factoring ethical and moral considerations into their decision making. The new field of inquiry directed at the development of artificial moral agents is referred to by a number of names including machine morality, machine ethics, roboethics, or artificial morality. Engineers exploring design strategies for systems sensitive to moral considerations in their choices and actions will need to determine what role ethical theory should play in defining control architectures for such systems.
Keywords:
artificial intelligence,
artificial moral agents,
autonomous systems,
decision‐making,
ethics,
moral agent,
machine morality,
machine ethics,
moral reasoning,
robot
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195374049 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2009 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374049.001.0001 |