Robots Could Act as Ethical Mediators Between Patients and Caregivers

Most of the discussion around robots and ethics lately has been about whether autonomous cars will decide to run over the nearest kitten or a slightly farther away basket full of puppies. Whether or not robots can make ethical decisions when presented with novel situations is something that lots and lots of people are still working on, but it's much easier for robots to be ethical in situations where the rules are a little bit clearer, and also when there is very little chance of running over cute animals. At ICRA last month, researchers at Georgia Tech presented a paper on "an intervening ethical governor for a robot mediator in patient-caregiver relationship." The idea is that robots will become part of our daily lives, and they are much, much better than humans at paying close and careful attention to things, without getting distracted or bored, forever. So robots with an understanding of ethical issues would be able to observe interactions between patients and caregivers, and intervene when they notice that something's not going the way it should.