AISep 1, 2020

Landscape of Machine Implemented Ethics

arXiv:2009.00335v140 citations
Originality Synthesis-oriented
AI Analysis

It addresses the problem of implementing ethical behavior in autonomous systems for researchers and developers, but is incremental as a survey.

This paper surveys the state-of-the-art in machine ethics, covering ethical theories and implementation techniques, but finds no consensus on best approaches or validation methods.

This paper surveys the state-of-the-art in machine ethics, that is, considerations of how to implement ethical behaviour in robots, unmanned autonomous vehicles, or software systems. The emphasis is on covering the breadth of ethical theories being considered by implementors, as well as the implementation techniques being used. There is no consensus on which ethical theory is best suited for any particular domain, nor is there any agreement on which technique is best placed to implement a particular theory. Another unresolved problem in these implementations of ethical theories is how to objectively validate the implementations. The paper discusses the dilemmas being used as validating 'whetstones' and whether any alternative validation mechanism exists. Finally, it speculates that an intermediate step of creating domain-specific ethics might be a possible stepping stone towards creating machines that exhibit ethical behaviour.

Foundations

The foundational work for this paper's niche, ranked by how specifically the neighbourhood builds on it — not by global fame.

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