Robot Ethics

Robots exist in an open world where you can’t predict everything that’s going to happen. The robot has to have some autonomy in order to act and react in a real situation. It needs to make decisions to protect itself, but it also needs to transfer control to humans when appropriate. You don’t want a robot to drive off a ledge, for instance — unless a human needs the robot to drive off the ledge. When those situations happen, you need to have smooth transfer of control from the robot to the appropriate human. [...]

The bottom line is, robots need to be responsive and resilient. They have to be able to protect themselves and also smoothly transfer control to humans when necessary.

- David Woods, "Want responsible robotics? Start with responsible humans"

Topic editor:
Joshua Eckroth
Ethics & Social Issues

Contents

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Good Starting Places

AI in the News

When A Robot Comes Knocking On The Door

Peter Remine says he will know it's time to get serious about rights for robots "when a robot knocks on my door asking for some help. " Remine, founder of the Seattle-based American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, says the moment will come when a robot in an automobile factory "will become sentient, realize that it doesn't want to do that unfulfilling and dangerous job anymore, and ask for protection under state workers' rights.

Source

Oct 27 2012
Video

Robot ethics: Morals and the machine

As robots grow more autonomous, society needs to develop rules to manage them. "In the classic science-fiction film “2001”, the ship's computer, HAL, faces a dilemma. His instructions require him both to fulfil the ship's mission (investigating an artefact near Jupiter) and to keep the mission's true purpose secret from the ship's crew. To resolve the contradiction, he tries to kill the crew. As robots become more autonomous, the notion of computer-controlled machines facing ethical decisions is moving out of the realm of science fiction and into the real world. Society needs to find ways to ensure that they are better equipped to make moral judgments than HAL was."

Source

Jun 2 2012, 7 min
Video

How To Survive A Robot Uprising (aka Robopocalypse)

"Its just a matter of time before robots become smarter than us. And perhaps at some point in the future, the idea of artificial intelligence rising up to destroy mankind will come true. Epipheo interviewed Robopocalypse author Daniel H. Wilson to find out exactly how to survive a robot uprising."

Source

4 min, 2012
Publication

The Future of Moral Machines

The prospect of machines capable of following moral principles, let alone understanding them, seems as remote today as the word “robot” is old. Some technologists enthusiastically extrapolate from the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months to predict an imminent “technological singularity” in which a threshold for machines of superhuman intelligence will be suddenly surpassed. Many Singularitarians assume a lot, not the least of which is that intelligence is fundamentally a computational process. The techno-optimists among them also believe that such machines will be essentially friendly to human beings.

Source

Dec 25 2011, By Allen, Colin
Video

Moral dilemmas face future robots

Robots can walk on the surface of Mars, and, more importantly still, they can even carry a plate of drinks from the kitchen to the living room. But they are hopeless at negotiating the moral maze of ethical decisions that confront humans everyday. David Reid reports.

Source

May 3 2011, 5 min
emotion, military
Publication

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

Source

Jul 29 2009, By Markoff, John
jobs, unemployment

General Readings

AI in the News

Robots at War: Scholars Debate the Ethical Issues

The dawn of the 21st century has been called the decade of the drone. Unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely operated by pilots in the United States, rain Hellfire missiles on suspected insurgents in South Asia and the Middle East.

Now a small group of scholars is grappling with what some believe could be the next generation of weaponry: lethal autonomous robots. At the center of the debate is Ronald C. Arkin, a Georgia Tech professor who has hypothesized lethal weapons systems that are ethically superior to human soldiers on the battlefield.

...But some scholars have dismissed Mr. Arkin's ethical governor as "vaporware," arguing that current technology is nowhere near the level of complexity that would be needed for a military robotic system to make life-and-death ethical judgments.

Source

Sep 10 2012, By Don Troop
AI in the News

Rise of the robots and the future of war

Faced with an enemy fighter jet, there's one sensible thing amilitarydrone should do: split. In July this year, amid a haze of dry ice and revolving spotlights at the Warton aerodrome, Lancashire, BAE Systems launched a prototype UAV that might do just that. With a development cost of more than 140m,the alien-looking Taraniswas billed by the Ministry of Defence as a "fully autonomous" craft that can fly deep into enemy territory to collect intelligence, drop bombs and "defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft".Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement from 2005-2007, said Taranis would have "almost no need for operator input. For some military tasks, armedrobotscan already take care of themselves.

3 mn. video on Boston Dynamics Big Dog.

Source

Nov 21 2010
UAV, drones
Link

Why Asimov's three laws of robotics are unethical

"Every now and again I get asked for views on Asimov's laws of robotics. Here are some questions and my answers."

Source

Jul 27 2006, By Aaron Sloman
Asimov, Three Laws
Link

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics

The three laws are

  • 1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • 2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • 3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov later added a 'zeroth' law

  • 0: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
 

 

Why Asimov's three laws of robotics are unethical, by Aaron Sloman. (27 Jul 2006).

Ethics dilemma in killer bots. By Philip Argy (National President of the Australian Computer Society). Australian IT (January 16, 2007). "When science fiction writer Isaac Asimov developed his Three Laws of Robotics back in 1940, the first law was: 'A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.' Asimov later amended the laws to put the needs of humanity as a whole above those of a single individual, but his intention was unchanged: that robots should be designed to protect human life and should be incapable of endangering it. So reports out of Korea of newly developed guard robots capable of firing autonomously on human targets are raising concerns about their potential uses. ... Ethicists have always questioned the use of technology in weapons development, but the new robots are causing additional disquiet because of their self-directing capabilities. ... It is the responsibility of all technology professionals to ensure that those in our organisation and within our influence are both responsible and ethical in the way they develop and apply technology."

 Offline Readings

Clarke, Roger. 1994. Asimov's Laws for Robotics: Implications for Information Technology. Parts 1 and 2. Computer(December 1993 (pp. 53-61), and January 1994 (pp. 57-65).

Asimov

Hardware and Software

Video

The Ethical Robot

UConn professor emerita Susan Anderson and her research partner, husband Michael Anderson of the University of Hartford, a UConn alumnus, are teaching machines how to behave ethically.

Source

Jun 15 2011, By Anderson, Susan and Michael Anderson, 4 min

News

AI in the News

Lethal Battlefield Robots: Sci-Fi or the Future of War?

Warbots don't exist yet, and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots hopes to keep it that way.

Source

May 3 2013
AI in the News

Smart Drones

Some robotics experts doubt that a computer will ever be able to reliably distinguish between an enemy and an innocent, let alone judge whether a load of explosives is the right, or proportional, response. What if the potential target is already wounded, or trying to surrender? And even if artificial intelligence achieves or surpasses a human level of competence, the critics point out, it will never be able to summon compassion.

Source

Mar 16 2013, By Keller, Bill
AI in the News

When A Robot Comes Knocking On The Door

Peter Remine says he will know it's time to get serious about rights for robots "when a robot knocks on my door asking for some help. " Remine, founder of the Seattle-based American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, says the moment will come when a robot in an automobile factory "will become sentient, realize that it doesn't want to do that unfulfilling and dangerous job anymore, and ask for protection under state workers' rights.

Source

Oct 27 2012
AI in the News

Robots at War: Scholars Debate the Ethical Issues

The dawn of the 21st century has been called the decade of the drone. Unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely operated by pilots in the United States, rain Hellfire missiles on suspected insurgents in South Asia and the Middle East.

Now a small group of scholars is grappling with what some believe could be the next generation of weaponry: lethal autonomous robots. At the center of the debate is Ronald C. Arkin, a Georgia Tech professor who has hypothesized lethal weapons systems that are ethically superior to human soldiers on the battlefield.

...But some scholars have dismissed Mr. Arkin's ethical governor as "vaporware," arguing that current technology is nowhere near the level of complexity that would be needed for a military robotic system to make life-and-death ethical judgments.

Source

Sep 10 2012, By Don Troop
AI in the News

How to make ethical robots

In the future according to robotics researchers, robots will likely fight our wars, care for our elderly, babysit our children, and serve and entertain us in a wide variety of situations. But as robotic development continues to grow, one subfield of robotics research is lagging behind other areas: roboethics, or ensuring that robot behavior adheres to certain moral standards. In a new paper that provides a broad overview of ethical behavior in robots, researchers emphasize the importance of being proactive rather than reactive in this area.

Source

Mar 12 2012, By Zyga, L.
AI in the News

Rise of the robots and the future of war

Faced with an enemy fighter jet, there's one sensible thing amilitarydrone should do: split. In July this year, amid a haze of dry ice and revolving spotlights at the Warton aerodrome, Lancashire, BAE Systems launched a prototype UAV that might do just that. With a development cost of more than 140m,the alien-looking Taraniswas billed by the Ministry of Defence as a "fully autonomous" craft that can fly deep into enemy territory to collect intelligence, drop bombs and "defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft".Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement from 2005-2007, said Taranis would have "almost no need for operator input. For some military tasks, armedrobotscan already take care of themselves.

3 mn. video on Boston Dynamics Big Dog.

Source

Nov 21 2010
UAV, drones

Videos

Video

How To Survive A Robot Uprising (aka Robopocalypse)

"Its just a matter of time before robots become smarter than us. And perhaps at some point in the future, the idea of artificial intelligence rising up to destroy mankind will come true. Epipheo interviewed Robopocalypse author Daniel H. Wilson to find out exactly how to survive a robot uprising."

Source

4 min, 2012
Video

Robot ethics: Morals and the machine

As robots grow more autonomous, society needs to develop rules to manage them. "In the classic science-fiction film “2001”, the ship's computer, HAL, faces a dilemma. His instructions require him both to fulfil the ship's mission (investigating an artefact near Jupiter) and to keep the mission's true purpose secret from the ship's crew. To resolve the contradiction, he tries to kill the crew. As robots become more autonomous, the notion of computer-controlled machines facing ethical decisions is moving out of the realm of science fiction and into the real world. Society needs to find ways to ensure that they are better equipped to make moral judgments than HAL was."

Source

Jun 2 2012, 7 min
Video

The Ethical Robot

UConn professor emerita Susan Anderson and her research partner, husband Michael Anderson of the University of Hartford, a UConn alumnus, are teaching machines how to behave ethically.

Source

Jun 15 2011, By Anderson, Susan and Michael Anderson, 4 min
Video

Moral dilemmas face future robots

Robots can walk on the surface of Mars, and, more importantly still, they can even carry a plate of drinks from the kitchen to the living room. But they are hopeless at negotiating the moral maze of ethical decisions that confront humans everyday. David Reid reports.

Source

May 3 2011, 5 min
emotion, military

Classic Articles & Books

Publication

Ethical machines

The notion of an ethical machine can be interpreted in more than one way. Perhaps the most important interpretation is a machine that can generalize from existing literature to infer one or more consistent ethical systems and can work out their consequences. An ultra-intelligent machine should be able to do this, and that is one reason for not fearing it.

Source

By Good, I.J., 1982
Asimov, classic, definition, definitions

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