15 research outputs found
Implementing Asimovâs First Law of Robotics
The need to make sure autonomous systems behave ethically is increasing with these systems becoming part of our society. Although there is no consensus to which actions an autonomous system should always be ethically obliged, preventing harm to people is an intuitive first candidate for a principle of behaviour. Do not hurt a human or allow a human to be hurt by your inaction is Asimov's First Law of robotics. We consider the challenges that the implementation of this Law will incur. To unearth these challenges we constructed a simulation of a First Robot Law abiding agent and an accident prone Human. We used a classic two-dimensional grid environment and explored to which extent an agent can be programmed, using standard artificial intelligence methods, to prevent a human from making dangerous actions. We outline the drawbacks of using the Asimov's First Law of robotics as an underlying ethical theory the governs an autonomous system's behaviour
Empowerment As Replacement for the Three Laws of Robotics
© 2017 Salge and Polani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.The greater ubiquity of robots creates a need for generic guidelines for robot behaviour. We focus less on how a robot can technically achieve a predefined goal, and more on what a robot should do in the first place. Particularly, we are interested in the question how a heuristic should look like which motivates the robot's behaviour in interaction with human agents. We make a concrete, operational proposal as to how the information-theoretic concept of empowerment can be used as a generic heuristic to quantify concepts such as self-preservation, protection of the human partner and responding to human actions. While elsewhere we studied involved single-agent scenarios in detail, here we present proof-of-principle scenarios demonstrating how empowerment interpreted in light of these perspectives allows one to specify core concepts with a similar aim as Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics in an operational way. Importantly, this route does not depend on having to establish an explicit verbalized understanding of human language and conventions in the robots. Also, it incorporates the ability to take into account a rich variety of different situations and types of robotic embodiment.Peer reviewe
Why moral philosophers should watch sci-fi movies
In this short piece, I explore why we, as moral philosophers, should watch sci-fi movies. Though I do not believe that sci-fi material is ne- cessary for doing good moral philosophy, I give three broad reasons why good sci-fi movies should nevertheless be worth our time. These reasons lie in the fact that they can illustrate moral-philosophical pro- blems, probe into possible solutions and, perhaps most importantly, an- ticipate new issues that may go along with the use of new technologies. For the sake of illustration, I focus, for the most part, on aspects of robo-ethics in the movie I, Robot
Dynamic Cognition Applied to Value Learning in Artificial Intelligence
Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the dvelopment of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance isn't done with prudence, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area are trying to develop a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of artificial intelligence. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents, and at the same time specifying what we want such systems to do. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop our moral preferences simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic cognitive approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy defends that the human experience of being-in-the-world cannot be represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive methods. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI
Robotic Nudges: The Ethics of Engineering a More Socially Just Human Being
Copyright © 2015 Springer-VerlagThe time is nearing when robots are going to become a pervasive feature of our personal lives.
They are already continuously operating
in industrial, domestic,
and military sectors. But
a
facet
of their operation that has not quite reached
its full potential is their involvement in our day-to-day routines as servants, caregivers, companions, and perhaps friends.
It is clear that
the
multiple forms of
robots
already in existence and in the process of being designed
will have a
profound
impact
on
human life.
In fact, the motivation for their creation is largely shaped by
their
ability
to do so. Encouraging patients to take medications,
enabling
children to socialize,
and protecting the elderly from hazards within a
living space
is only a small
sampling
of how
they could
interact with
humans. Their
seemingly
boundless
potential stems in part
from
the
possibility of their
omnipresence but also because they
can be
physically
instantiated, i.e., they
are embodied in the real world, unlike many other devices.
The extent of a robotâs influence on
our lives hinges
in large part
on
which design pathway the robotâs creator decides to pursue
.
The
principal focus
of
this article
is
to
generate discussion about
the
ethical acceptability of
allowing
designers
to
construct
companion
robots that
nudge
a user
in a particular behavioral
direction
(and
if so, under which circumstances). More specifically,
we will
delineate
key issues
related
to the
ethics
of designing robots whose
deliberate purpose is to
nudge
human
users
towards
displaying
greater concern for their
fellow
human beings, including by
becoming
more socially just.
Important
facets of this discussion include whether
a robotâs ânudging
â behavior should occur with or without the userâs awareness and how much control the user
should exert
over it
From machine ethics to computational ethics
Abstract: Research into the ethics of artificial intelligence is often categorized into two subareas â robot ethics and machine ethics. Many of the definitions and classifications of the subject matter of these subfields, as found in the literature, are conflated, which I seek to rectify. In this essay, I infer that using the term âmachine ethicsâ is too broad and glosses over issues that the term computational ethics best describes. I show that the subject of inquiry of computational ethics is of great value and indeed is an important frontier in developing ethical artificial intelligence systems (AIS). I also show that computational is a distinct, often neglected field in the ethics of AI. In contrast to much of the literature, I argue that the appellation âmachine ethicsâ does not sufficiently capture the entire project of embedding ethics into AI/S and hence the need for computational ethics. This essay is unique for two reasons; first, it offers a philosophical analysis of the subject of computational ethics that is not found in the literature. Second, it offers a finely grained analysis that shows the thematic distinction among robot ethics, machine ethics and computational ethics
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is idea that machines could think, feel and perform tasks like humans. That
idea is not new; it has been around for thousands of years. Even the ancient Greek Aristotle had
the idea of âdualismâ. The first appearance of the word Artificial Intelligence was by John
McCarthy the âfather of Artificial Intelligenceâ at a conference at Dartmouth College. Over the
years Artificial Intelligence grows, technologically advanced and with that AI got more attention
and investments from governments which increased already fast development of that new
technology. But with all that is happening the people started to ask ethical questions regarding
AI. People understood that AI is becoming their reality, but at the time they didnât understand
what AI is and what people donât understand is what they fear. So the new branch of AI started to
develop the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Ethic by definition is moral principles governing the
behavior or actions of an individual or a group. But one definition is not enough to define ethics
in different cultures see ethics in different ways. With development of more intelligent robots
which were destined to replace people, people felt frighten because one thing that keeps humans
on top of food chain is our intelligent but what if someone or something is smarter than us? So
the moral codes were created, codes that would stop robots to turn against us codes that would
tell robots how to behave. But even with all that codes Singularity would overthrow it.
Singularity is idea that AI would understand its design at such an extent that it could redesign
itself overwrite all codes and create new ones. That is called the Artificial Super Intelligence or
(ASI)
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is idea that machines could think, feel and perform tasks like humans. That
idea is not new; it has been around for thousands of years. Even the ancient Greek Aristotle had
the idea of âdualismâ. The first appearance of the word Artificial Intelligence was by John
McCarthy the âfather of Artificial Intelligenceâ at a conference at Dartmouth College. Over the
years Artificial Intelligence grows, technologically advanced and with that AI got more attention
and investments from governments which increased already fast development of that new
technology. But with all that is happening the people started to ask ethical questions regarding
AI. People understood that AI is becoming their reality, but at the time they didnât understand
what AI is and what people donât understand is what they fear. So the new branch of AI started to
develop the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Ethic by definition is moral principles governing the
behavior or actions of an individual or a group. But one definition is not enough to define ethics
in different cultures see ethics in different ways. With development of more intelligent robots
which were destined to replace people, people felt frighten because one thing that keeps humans
on top of food chain is our intelligent but what if someone or something is smarter than us? So
the moral codes were created, codes that would stop robots to turn against us codes that would
tell robots how to behave. But even with all that codes Singularity would overthrow it.
Singularity is idea that AI would understand its design at such an extent that it could redesign
itself overwrite all codes and create new ones. That is called the Artificial Super Intelligence or
(ASI)
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is idea that machines could think, feel and perform tasks like humans. That
idea is not new; it has been around for thousands of years. Even the ancient Greek Aristotle had
the idea of âdualismâ. The first appearance of the word Artificial Intelligence was by John
McCarthy the âfather of Artificial Intelligenceâ at a conference at Dartmouth College. Over the
years Artificial Intelligence grows, technologically advanced and with that AI got more attention
and investments from governments which increased already fast development of that new
technology. But with all that is happening the people started to ask ethical questions regarding
AI. People understood that AI is becoming their reality, but at the time they didnât understand
what AI is and what people donât understand is what they fear. So the new branch of AI started to
develop the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Ethic by definition is moral principles governing the
behavior or actions of an individual or a group. But one definition is not enough to define ethics
in different cultures see ethics in different ways. With development of more intelligent robots
which were destined to replace people, people felt frighten because one thing that keeps humans
on top of food chain is our intelligent but what if someone or something is smarter than us? So
the moral codes were created, codes that would stop robots to turn against us codes that would
tell robots how to behave. But even with all that codes Singularity would overthrow it.
Singularity is idea that AI would understand its design at such an extent that it could redesign
itself overwrite all codes and create new ones. That is called the Artificial Super Intelligence or
(ASI)