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An Analysis of Machine Ethics from the Perspective of Autonomy

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Philosophy and Computing

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 128))

Abstract

Machine ethics has been proposed as a new discipline at the intersection of ethics and computer science, aimed at investigating computational models of ethical principles to be embedded into the autonomous software and robotic systems to come. This work provides a view on the current research on autonomous systems and aims to show that classic ethics guiding human researchers is what is really needed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This would roughly equate to putting a robot in a cage.

  2. 2.

    I wrote ‘originally’ because some recent research endeavors have the aim to recreate the complexity of the animal and human brain in simulated or embodied form, so that systems are built without a specific task in the mind of the researchers, but rather a higher-level scientific objective that does not directly translate into a control program (Adee 2010; Mims 2011; Hsu 2014).

  3. 3.

    There might be readers contending that by not killing the potential organ donor the machine would indeed do harm to a human (five, to be precise), and that having such a negative goal would cause a contradiction in the machine’s logical circuits. There is indeed an ethical problem, but this does not constitute a call for machine ethics. Indeed, it may be the opposite: do we really wanna endow machines with faulty theories?

  4. 4.

    The adverb strictly refers to the context of ethics. The Google car is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant accomplishments in engineering in the recent years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Media, Culture and Society, University of the West of Scotland, Ayr, UK

    Mario Verdicchio

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  1. Mario Verdicchio
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Correspondence to Mario Verdicchio .

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA

    Thomas M. Powers

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Verdicchio, M. (2017). An Analysis of Machine Ethics from the Perspective of Autonomy. In: Powers, T. (eds) Philosophy and Computing. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 128. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61043-6_9

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