Sharkey, A. (2020) Can we program or train robots to be good? Ethics and Information Technology, 22 (4). pp. 283-295. ISSN 1388-1957
Abstract
As robots are deployed in a widening range of situations, it is necessary to develop a clearer position about whether or not they can be trusted to make good moral decisions. In this paper, we take a realistic look at recent attempts to program and to train robots to develop some form of moral competence. Examples of implemented robot behaviours that have been described as 'ethical', or 'minimally ethical' are considered, although they are found to operate only in quite constrained and limited application domains. There is a general recognition that current robots cannot be described as full moral agents, but it is less clear whether will always be the case. Concerns are raised about the insufficiently justified use of terms such as 'moral' and 'ethical' to describe the behaviours of robots that are often more related to safety considerations than to moral ones. Given the current state of the art, two possible responses are identified. The first involves continued efforts to develop robots that are capable of ethical behaviour. The second is to argue against, and to attempt to avoid, placing robots in situations that demand moral competence and an understanding of the surrounding social situation. There is something to be gained from both responses, but it is argued here that the second is the more responsible choice.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Ethics; Moral competence; Robot; Decision-making; Minimally ethical |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EUROPEAN COMMISSION - FP6/FP7 EASEL - 611971 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 Jun 2017 13:26 |
Last Modified: | 20 Oct 2023 13:43 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10676-017-9425-5 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:117616 |