Proper moral beliefs are fundamental for language models, yet assessing these beliefs poses a significant challenge. This study introduces a novel three-module framework to evaluate the moral beliefs of four prominent large language models. Initially, we constructed a dataset containing 472 moral choice scenarios in Chinese, derived from moral words. The decision-making process of the models in these scenarios reveals their moral principle preferences. By ranking these moral choices, we discern the varying moral beliefs held by different language models. Additionally, through moral debates, we investigate the firmness of these models to their moral choices. Our findings indicate that English language models, namely ChatGPT and Gemini, closely mirror moral decisions of the sample of Chinese university students, demonstrating strong adherence to their choices and a preference for individualistic moral beliefs. In contrast, Chinese models such as Ernie and ChatGLM lean towards collectivist moral beliefs, exhibiting ambiguity in their moral choices and debates. This study also uncovers gender bias embedded within the moral beliefs of all examined language models. Our methodology offers an innovative means to assess moral beliefs in both artificial and human intelligence, facilitating a comparison of moral values across different cultures.

Do we need artificial intelligence to tell us what's right and wrong? The idea might strike you as repulsive. Many regard their morals, whatever the source, as central to who they are. But everyone faces morally uncertain situations, and on occasion, we seek the input of others. We might turn to someone we think of as a moral authority, or imagine what they might do in a similar situation.

Self-driving cars are being developed by several major technology companies and carmakers. When a driver slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian crossing the road illegally, she is making a moral decision that shifts risk from the pedestrian to the people in the car. Self-driving cars might soon have to make such ethical judgments on their own -- but settling on a universal moral code for the vehicles could be a thorny task, suggests a survey of 2.3 million people from around the world. The largest ever survey of machine ethics1, published today in Nature, finds that many of the moral principles that guide a driver's decisions vary by country. For example, in a scenario in which some combination of pedestrians and passengers will die in a collision, people from relatively prosperous countries with strong institutions were less likely to spare a pedestrian who stepped into traffic illegally.

Intelligent machines, long promised and never delivered, are finally on the horizon. Sufficiently intelligent robots will be able to operate autonomously from human control. They will be able to make genuine choices. And if a robot can make choices, there is a real question about whether it will make moral choices. But what is moral for a robot? Is this the same as what's moral for a human? Philosophers and computer scientists alike tend to focus on the difficulty of implementing subtle human morality in literal-minded machines. But there's another problem, one that really ought to come first. It's the question of whether we ought to try to impose our own morality on intelligent machines at all. In fact, I'd argue that doing so is likely to be counterproductive, and even unethical. The real problem of robot morality is not the robots, but us. Can we handle sharing the world with a new type of moral creature? We like to imagine that artificial intelligence (AI) will be similar to humans, because we are the only advanced intelligence we know. But we are probably wrong. If and when AI appears, it will probably be quite unlike us.

It is almost an impossible choice - deciding whether to sacrifice the life of one innocent person to save the lives of five others. But scientists have discovered that the choice you make in this scenario could have a drastic impact on how trustworthy people think you are. The findings may help to explain why humans are often drawn to moral choices that do not benefit the greater good, such as refusing to make such sacrifices. Psychologists have explored why humans seen to be drawn to making'illogical' moral choices, like sacrificing the lives of many to save the life of one person, depicted in Saving Private Ryan (pictured). It suggests there may be certain rules about morality hardwired into human nature due to our evolution as a social species. Jim Everett, a psychologist at the University of Oxford who led the work, said such rule-based decisions - known as deontological morality which focuses on ideas of right and wrong – may have served to increase group cohesion in the past by helping people trust each other.