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Ethics, Law, and Governance in the Development of Robots

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Ethics and Emerging Technologies

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In this chapter, Wendell Wallach begins by reviewing the history and current state of the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. He also distinguishes between two types of ethical issues associated with advances in the field. Roboethics concerns ethical issues that arise from the use of robots in our homes and workplaces. These include such things as safety, privacy, and responsibility/liability. Machine ethics concerns ethical issues associated with the development of artificial moral agents — i.e. machine intelligences that are capable of making moral decisions. The central issues in machine ethics are how to design morality into machine intelligences, as well as what the content or form of that moral code should be. After discussing both roboethics and machine ethics, Wallach concludes with a proposal for increasing monitoring and oversight of the robotics and artificial intelligence industry.

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© 2014 Wendell Wallach

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Wallach, W. (2014). Ethics, Law, and Governance in the Development of Robots. In: Sandler, R.L. (eds) Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349088_24

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