As machines become smarter, can they also become ethical?

Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne His books include Animal Liberation, The Life You Can Save, The Most Good You Can Do, and, most recently, Famine, Affluence and Morality. Last month, AlphaGo, a computer program specially designed to play the game Go, caused shock waves among aficionados when it defeated Lee Sedol, one of the world's top-ranked professional players, winning a five-game tournament by a score of 4-1. Why, you may ask, is that news? Twenty years have passed since the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov and we all know computers have improved since then. But Deep Blue won through sheer computing power, using its ability to calculate the outcomes of more moves to a deeper level than even a world champion can.