Machine Ethics Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: Building an Artificial Intelligence System that Ensures Privacy and Social Justice

The term "artificial intelligence" (AI) refers to technology becoming increasingly prevalent in many facets of human life. Nevertheless, significant concerns regarding social justice and privacy in the application of AI are also being noticed. This article explores the significance of ethics in developing artificial intelligence systems that can protect individuals' privacy and promote social justice. A qualitative methodology was used for this study, which consists of a review of previous research. As a result of this research, we describe what is artificial intelligence with examples of its use, ethics with its functions, how to embed ethics into artificial intelligence technologies, including robot and machine ethics. The following is an examination of AI and ethics from the point of view of privacy and social justice. In the context of the use of AI, offer some suggestions about constructing a more moral and accountable AI system.

Ought we align the values of artificial moral agents?

In the near future, the capabilities of commonly used artificial systems will reach a level where we will be able to permit them to make moral decisions autonomously as part of their proper daily functioning—autonomous cars, personal assistants, household robots, stock trading bots, autonomous weapons, etc. are examples of the types of systems that will deal with simple to complex moral situations that require some level of moral judgment. In the research field of machine ethics, we distinguish several types of artificial moral agents, each of which has a different level of moral agency. In this paper, we focus on the moral agency of Explicit and Full-blown artificial moral agents. We form an opinion regarding their level of moral agency, and then examine the question of whether it is morally right to align the values of (artificial) moral agents. If we assume or are able to determine that certain types of artificial agents are indeed moral agents, then we ought to examine whether it is morally right to construct them in such a way that they are “committed” to human values. We discuss an analogy to human moral agents and the implications of granting or denying moral agency from artificial agents.

J. Savulescu's "The God Machine" as a Moral Agent and the Problem of Responsibility

This article is devoted to the issue of moral responsibility in connection with artificial intelligence technologies. In recent years, artificial intelligence has been actively developing towards greater autonomy, which makes the philosophical analysis of artificial moral agency extremely relevant. The relevance of the work is also determined by the increasing spread of artificial intelligence in professional areas, including those related to the adoption of responsible managerial, financial, etc. solutions. The main object of research in the article is a thought experiment — the project of the so-called “The God Machine” by the Western philosopher J. Savulescu, which allows us to turn to such an important aspect as the possibility of the influence of artificial intelligence on the development of human moral consciousness, since modern technologies, along with projects of biological moral human enhancement, claim the ability to create artificial moral agents. The authors give a comprehensive analysis of this project, correlating it with other concepts of modern analytical philosophy of consciousness, incl. Н. Frankfurt. The theoretical focus of the study is directed to the concepts of responsibility and freedom as key in formulating the criteria of moral agency. At the same time, the article considers the features of the implementation of the criteria of moral agency in relation to artificial intelligence. The article assesses the viability of J. Savulescu's project, in particular: to what extent artificial intelligence like the The God Machine can be considered as a moral agent, whether a person can acquire the characteristics of a moral, responsible and free person with the help of such an artificial mediator, and to what extent such projects contribute to the moral enhancement of mankind. It also points to the risks of paternalistic interference in the development of morality. Separately, the phenomenon of moral dilemmas is considered in connection with the problems of embedding artificial intelligence in the life of modern society, as well as the logical aspects of decision-making in the context of moral conflicts. The conclusion is formulated about the key importance of the category of responsibility for modeling the relationship between man and artificial intelligence in machine ethics.

Ethical AI: Proposal to bridge the gap in EU regulation on trustworthy AI and to support practical implementation of ethical perspectives

In 2020, GPT-3 defined itself as a thinking robot. The history of AI development is identified with machines becoming increasingly intelligent, but behind it lies the human factor, the soaring of the human mind. However, the question of machine ethics is also a question of cultural ethics. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in seven industries, the author reveals that ethical considerations are not yet taken into account in the development of AI systems. To support practical implementation, the author identifies two shortcomings based on a comparative analysis of the EU’s AI Act and Ethical Guidelines for Trustworthy AI: (1) missing ethical sensitisation and training of AI system developers and supervisors; (2) suggested approaches to handling harmful feedback loops and decision-making biases. The author uses the philosophical and ethical heritage of 21 philosophers as a compass to propose solutions for the identified gaps and deficiencies of organisational integration.

Towards artificial virtuous agents: games, dilemmas and machine learning

Machine ethics has received increasing attention over the past few years because of the need to ensure safe and reliable artificial intelligence (AI). The two dominantly used theories in machine ethics are deontological and utilitarian ethics. Virtue ethics, on the other hand, has often been mentioned as an alternative ethical theory. While this interesting approach has certain advantages over popular ethical theories, little effort has been put into engineering artificial virtuous agents due to challenges in their formalization, codifiability, and the resolution of ethical dilemmas to train virtuous agents. We propose to bridge this gap by using role-playing games riddled with moral dilemmas. There are several such games in existence, such as Papers, Please and Life is Strange, where the main character encounters situations where they must choose the right course of action by giving up something else dear to them. We draw inspiration from such games to show how a systemic role-playing game can be designed to develop virtues within an artificial agent. Using modern day AI techniques, such as affinity-based reinforcement learning and explainable AI, we motivate the implementation of virtuous agents that play such role-playing games, and the examination of their decisions through a virtue ethical lens. The development of such agents and environments is a first step towards practically formalizing and demonstrating the value of virtue ethics in the development of ethical agents.

Artificial Intelligence: in Search for Formalization of Ethical Foundations

Introduction. In digital age the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in society is largely determined by the technological breakthrough in the field of applied AI over the past two decades. However the implementation of AI innovations not only opens up new opportunities for individuals and society as a whole, but also raises a number of problems, primarily of a socio-ethical focus. In particular, the scientific community considers the problem of “moral machines” to be of high research priority. The article deals with the problems of ethical regulation of AI in human-machine communication, latest research results, and trends in this field.Methodology and sources. The article is based on methodology of cultural-philosophical, axiological and interdisciplinary approaches. There were also used the following sources: scientific research of Russian and foreign authors, documents, publications and websites dedicated to the current state of AI and the tasks to be solved by specialists in the field of AI ethics.Results and discussion. The urgency of issues in the field of AI ethics determines the need for systematization of basic ethical concepts in order to integrate ethics into applied AI. It is argued that despite the accumulation of regulatory basis in the field of AI ethics, the problem of conclusive formalization of ethical norms in this field is still unresolved. The main difficulty with the aforementioned norms lies in the fact that ethics of AI is more dependent upon formalization than upon semantics. Conclusion. Currently, the process of establishing a regulatory framework for ethics of AI is actively discussed in industry and science. However, if we want the human-machine communication to start its development from the standpoint of a human-centric digital age, it is important not only to solve ethical problems, but also to create new professions in the field of AI ethics, as well as to introduce new approaches towards the training of engineers and developers of AI systems that meet demands of the time.

To Each Technology Its Own Ethics: The Problem of Ethical Proliferation

Ethics plays a key role in the normative analysis of the impacts of technology. We know that computers in general and the processing of data, the use of artificial intelligence, and the combination of computers and/or artificial intelligence with robotics are all associated with ethically relevant implications for individuals, groups, and society. In this article, we argue that while all technologies are ethically relevant, there is no need to create a separate ‘ethics of X’ or ‘X ethics’ for each and every subtype of technology or technological property—e.g. computer ethics, AI ethics, data ethics, information ethics, robot ethics, and machine ethics. Specific technologies might have specific impacts, but we argue that they are often sufficiently covered and understood through already established higher-level domains of ethics. Furthermore, the proliferation of tech ethics is problematic because (a) the conceptual boundaries between the subfields are not well-defined, (b) it leads to a duplication of effort and constant reinventing the wheel, and (c) there is danger that participants overlook or ignore more fundamental ethical insights and truths. The key to avoiding such outcomes lies in a taking the discipline of ethics seriously, and we consequently begin with a brief description of what ethics is, before presenting the main forms of technology related ethics. Through this process, we develop a hierarchy of technology ethics, which can be used by developers and engineers, researchers, or regulators who seek an understanding of the ethical implications of technology. We close by deducing two principles for positioning ethical analysis which will, in combination with the hierarchy, promote the leveraging of existing knowledge and help us to avoid an exaggerated proliferation of tech ethics.

Impact of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions on Intelligent Ethical Agent

Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence, many autonomous machines are making their way into the society. With the burgeoning development of autonomous systems like self-driving cars have come concerns about how machines will make moral decisions and thus a new field called Machine Ethics has emerged. Machine ethics deals with moral dilemmas in machines while interacting with humans, or possibly other machines as well, and ensures the decisions taken by the algorithm are morally acceptable. This is in contrast to computer ethics, which solely focuses on ethical problems and protocol surrounding humans' use of technology. In this article, we have explored the moral dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles and have tried to train an artificial intelligence model that makes ethically acceptable decisions based on the data collected by the famous moral machine experiment. Here, we describe the results obtained from the model. Firstly, we summarize the accuracies obtained upon training multiple models with different techniques. Later, we document the variation of accuraciesin the model upon using the Hofstede model of six dimensions of national cultures as a factor when pre-processing the data.

The case for virtuous robots

Is it possible to build virtuous robots? And is it a good idea? In this paper in machine ethics, I offer a positive answer to both questions. Although moral architectures based on deontology and utilitarianism have been most often considered, I argue that a virtue ethics approach may ultimately be more promising to program artificial moral agents (AMA). The basic idea is that a robot should behave as a virtuous person would (or recommend). Now, with the help of machine learning technology, it is conceivable to get an AMA to learn from moral exemplars. To support my claim, I sketch the steps of building such a virtuous robot, using the thought experiment of programming an autonomous car facing a trolley-like dilemma situation. It appears that, at least in certain contexts, the virtue ethics approach can provide its own and original solution. I then give four reasons to favor it. Not only are virtuous robots technically feasible, but they have the advantage over their deontological and utilitarian counterparts of fostering normative consensus between these moral schools, improving social acceptability, and beginning to address the technical challenge of moral perception.

The Power of Algorithmic Capitalism

ABSTRACT The rise of algorithmic capitalism is marked by the extraction of data enabled by the combination of algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI). This coupling constitutes a powerful force, altering the rules, regulations, and discourses that comprise global governance. In our fraught times, numerical representations—algorithms and AI—can serve as proxies for the power of capitalism. Efforts to check this structure may be bracketed under four rubrics: initiatives to effect greater transparency, regulation, audits by third-party inspectors, and accountability. Notwithstanding modest gains in some of these domains, algorithms are extending their scope and capacities more rapidly than humans have established means for controlling them. This article traces these developments and their implications for achieving an ethical future by projecting scenarios. They lead to the quandary of what the creation of moral machines may mean for world order.

Experimental Machine Ethics and the Problem of Entrenchment

The increasing prevalence of autonomously operating artificial agents has created the desire and arguably need to equip such agents with moral capabilities. A potential tool to morally sanction an artificial agent as admissible for its tasks is to apply a so-called moral Turing test (MTT) to the machine. The MTT can be supported by a pragmatist metaethics as an iteratively applied and modified procedure. However, this iterative, experimentalist procedure faces a dilemma due to the problem of technological entrenchment. I argue that, at least in certain important domains of application, the justification of artificial moral agents requires their deployment, which may entrench them and thereby undermine the justificatory process by hindering its further iteration.

Can Robotic AI Systems Be Virtuous and Why Does This Matter?

The growing use of social robots in times of isolation refocuses ethical concerns for Human–Robot Interaction and its implications for social, emotional, and moral life. In this article we raise a virtue-ethics-based concern regarding deployment of social robots relying on deep learning AI and ask whether they may be endowed with ethical virtue, enabling us to speak of “virtuous robotic AI systems”. In answering this question, we argue that AI systems cannot genuinely be virtuous but can only behave in a virtuous way. To that end, we start from the philosophical understanding of the nature of virtue in the Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition, which we take to imply the ability to perform (1) the right actions (2) with the right feelings and (3) in the right way. We discuss each of the three requirements and conclude that AI is unable to satisfy any of them. Furthermore, we relate our claims to current research in machine ethics, technology ethics, and Human–Robot Interaction, discussing various implications, such as the possibility to develop Autonomous Artificial Moral Agents in a virtue ethics framework.

Interdisciplinary Confusion and Resolution in the Context of Moral Machines

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have fueled widespread academic discourse on the ethics of AI within and across a diverse set of disciplines. One notable subfield of AI ethics is machine ethics, which seeks to implement ethical considerations into AI systems. However, since different research efforts within machine ethics have discipline-specific concepts, practices, and goals, the resulting body of work is pestered with conflict and confusion as opposed to fruitful synergies. The aim of this paper is to explore ways to alleviate these issues, both on a practical and theoretical level of analysis. First, we describe two approaches to machine ethics: the philosophical approach and the engineering approach and show how tensions between the two arise due to discipline specific practices and aims. Using the concept of disciplinary capture, we then discuss potential promises and pitfalls to cross-disciplinary collaboration. Drawing on recent work in philosophy of science, we finally describe how metacognitive scaffolds can be used to avoid epistemological obstacles and foster innovative collaboration in AI ethics in general and machine ethics in particular.

Preliminary Thoughts on Defining f(x) for Ethical Machines

There is a growing literature in machine ethics attempting at creating ethical machines through AI and machine learning. Although many concerns with respect to such attempts have been raised, including the difficulties regarding the gathering of relevant contextual information as well as solving ethical dilemmas, it appears that many fundamental ethical notions have been overlooked in the implementation of normative theories to machines. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of important aspects that need to be taken into account in the attempt of defining so called ethical machines.

Ethics and Automated Systems in the Health Domain: Design and Submission of a Survey on Rehabilitation and Assistance Robotics to Collect Insiders' Opinions and Perception.

Background: The problem of the relationship between ethics and robotics is very broad, has important implications, and has two large areas of impact: the first is conduct in research, development, and use in general. The second is the implication of the programming of machine ethics. Purpose: Develop and administer a survey of professionals in the health domain collection of their positions on ethics in rehabilitation and assistance robotics. Methods: An electronic survey was designed using Microsoft Forms and submitted to 155 professionals in the health domain (age between 23 and 64 years; 78 males, mean age 43.7, minimum age 24, maximum age 64; 77 females, mean age 44.3, minimum age 23, maximum age 64) using social media. Results and discussion: The outcome returned: (a) the position on ethics training during university studies and in the world of work, (b) the organizational aspects hindered by ethics and those to be perfected in relation to ethics, (c) issues of ethical concern, (d) structured feedback on the usefulness of the methodology along with considerations of open text. Conclusions: An electronic survey methodology has allowed the structured collection of information on positions towards ethics in this sector. Encouraging feedback from the participants suggests the continuation of the study is beneficial. A continuation is expected, expanding the audience of professionals involved and perfecting the survey with the support of scientific companies.

Artificial intelligence in the context of the transhumanism concept: an ethical approach

The author reveals the features of artificial intelligence, reflecting on the problem of machine achieving an ability to act and think within the framework of ethics. This is all the more important since investments in artificial intelligence (AI) systems are constantly growing, AI is becoming a strategically important area for all developed countries, and the impact of AI systems on society is rapidly increasing - if two decades ago, the field of machine ethics seemed interesting only to a small number of scientists as a field for theoretical research, today questions about methods and approaches to computability and algorithmization of moral judgments are becoming an essential applied area of knowledge.

Moral dilemmas for moral machines

Autonomous systems are being developed and deployed in situations that may require some degree of ethical decision-making ability. As a result, research in machine ethics has proliferated in recent years. This work has included using moral dilemmas as validation mechanisms for implementing decision-making algorithms in ethically-loaded situations. Using trolley-style problems in the context of autonomous vehicles as a case study, I argue (1) that this is a misapplication of philosophical thought experiments because (2) it fails to appreciate the purpose of moral dilemmas, and (3) this has potentially catastrophic consequences; however, (4) there are uses of moral dilemmas in machine ethics that are appropriate and the novel situations that arise in a machine-learning context can shed some light on philosophical work in ethics.

A Friendly Critique of Levinasian Machine Ethics

AbstractIn this article, I provide a sympathetic critique of a particular orientation or approach in machine ethics, namely, “Levinasian” machine ethics. I am sympathetic insofar as Levinasian machine ethics articulates what I call a “normativity‐first” approach to ethics and uses the particularly striking case of robots, or artificial agents, to illustrate it. However, the particular way in which Levinasians like David Gunkel articulate a normativity‐first ethics is, I think, misguided. In order to be successful, such an ethics would need to be made more Levinasian, but doing so would lead to an ethical theory with undesirable consequences in the context of digital and surveillance capitalism. I will conclude by suggesting that the aims of Levinasian machine ethics might be better served by an ethics of design oriented toward transforming our shared forms of moral life.

310 Ethical Challenges Facing Autonomous Surgical Robots

Abstract Aim Despite delays, automation is expected across all fields, with notable interest in surgical robotics. With this comes many of the ethical and moral dilemmas the industry is expected to face in bringing autonomation, to surgical robots, into clinical practice. Method A review of the available literature published on automation, machine ethics and surgical robotics. Results One of the key issues at the heart of autonomous surgical robotics lies the responsibility in the event of complications. Does it lie at the hand of the robotics manufacturer, the clinician or clinical organisation or possibly the patient? A question that remains unanswered despite the relative expectation of autonomous robotics into clinical practice in the coming years. Furthermore, how should a robot proceed in an emergency? An automated surgical robot, which lacks a moral framework, may be unable to deal with emergencies especially within the context of fluctuating local environment where the needs of patients are distinct and everchanging. In addition to this, a political and ethical concern is the expected number of job losses of highly skilled professionals and the training need to adapt to changing work. Can these professionals be employed in a different capacity? Moreover, data concerns have been highlighted, how best to use patient data to improve the technologies whilst preventing misuse of sensitive information. Conclusions Based on current literature, greater work is needed to be done to address the ethical issues before implementation of autonomous surgical robotics.

Passive, Active, and Proactive Systems and Machines for the Protection and Preservation of Animals and Animal Species

Digitalization and automation are expanding into many areas, resulting in more widespread use of partially and fully autonomous machines and robots. At the same time, environmental and other crises and disasters are on the rise, the world population is growing, and animals are losing their habitat. Increasingly, machines and robots such as agricultural vehicles, autonomous cars, robotic lawnmowers, or social robots are encountering animals of all kinds. In the process, the latter are injured or killed. Some machines can be designed so that this does not happen. Relevant disciplines and research areas briefly introduced here are machine ethics, social robotics, animal-machine interaction, and animal-computer interaction. In addition, animal welfare is important. Passive and active machines—as they are called in this review—are already appearing and help to observe and protect animals. Proactive machines may play a role in the future. They could use the possibilities of full automation and autonomy to save animals from suffering in agriculture or in the wild. During crises and disasters and in extensive nature reserves, they could observe, care for, and protect animals. The review provides initial considerations on active, passive, and proactive machines and how they can be used in an animal preservation context while bearing in mind recent technical and global developments.