Teaching ethics and human values to artificial intelligence

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) has led many to ask questions about what if these intelligent machines and robots start acting unethically? This has led many to go to the extreme demanding for an outright ban on robotics and AI research while others are calling for more research to understand how AI might be constrained. But how can robots learn ethical behavior if there is no "user manual" for being human? Researchers Mark Riedl and Brent Harrison from the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology believe the answer lies in "Quixote" -- to be unveiled at the AAAI-16 Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. Quixote teaches "value alignment" to robots by training them to read stories, learn acceptable sequences of events and understand successful ways to behave in human societies.