Research Ethics (In Robotics)
This article is based on article Research Ethics F. Operto, “Ethics in Advanced Robotics,” in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol.18, no. 1, pp.72- 78, March 2011. This is a review of that article/paper.
What is “Ethics”?
Moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.
Roboethics?
Robot ethics, sometimes known by the short expression “roboethics”,concerns ethical problems that occur with robots, such as whether robots pose a threat to humans in the long or short run,whether some uses of robots are problematic (such as in healthcare or as ‘killer robots’ in war), and how robots should be designed such as they act ‘ethically’.
Roboethics was originally conceived as human-responsibility ethics.The roboticists and ethicists that contributed to their creation highlighted the following aspects:
Problems regarding robot autonomy
Problems related to warfare applications
Problems in human–robot relations (dependence, privacy, robot appearance, and potential confusion between natural and artificial) IMPORTANT
Digital divide (for nations, genders, and ages) l ethical dimension of technology.
Roboethics is not artifical ethics and not even the regulatory system of dependability and safety.Roboethics indicated that the individual and society may intervene upstream on the direction of robotics and its products.The new applied ethics, called roboethics, was put forward in 2001/2002, and publicly discussed in 2004 during the First International Symposium on Roboethics.
Roboethics Analysis
We can apply Roboethics in the following cases:
Human Dignity and privacy
Preservation of human identity and transhuman
Liability and responsibility issues
Psychological effects
Cost-benefit analysis
Ethics in Complex technological Societies
Traditionally, ethics is the philosophical or theological subject that studies human behavior and assessment criteria for human behaviors and choices.Modern ethics have developed from various points of view along classical philosophy.
Robot Sophie
The fact that robot Sophie has such advanced features and is increasingly human-like behavior worries people about the effect of ethics.
On the other hand, with the development of AI technologies, various theft events occurred as a result of AI mimicking people and deceiving some people in phone calls.
A problem
In our case, the question is: Who is responsible for any damage that may be caused by an autonomous robot? Is it the designer, manufacturer, programmer, or final user?
Often, it will be difficult to obtain easy answers to this question. As already discussed, roboethics has adopted the principles established by the Charter of Human Rights and the Lisbon Treaty. However, these certainly do not satisfy the realm or depth of the ethical debate.
Our goal
For the purpose of this article (to analyze the human–robot relationship), we shall consider the two main meanings of the term responsibility:
The analysis of the identity of the agent of the cause of certain actions and their effects (utilitarianism or consequentialism or teleologism)
An expression of motivations that leads an agent to act in a certain way (deontological ethics or Kantian ethics), according to which the individual assesses the consequences of his or her actions.
In the last century, we know that the questions “What authority and what set of moral rules am I obliged to be accountable to? State law? God?” forced many answers (utilitarian or deontological) to a crisis point.
According to this position, morality and immorality constitute a gradual continuum: such is the case for children, which, in our society, are not deemed to be fully responsible for their actions or the disabled [1][2]. As they are quasi-moral agents, robots are also subject to ethical behavior, equipped with some rights of their own.
Conclusion
Using science and our ability to compare, we must define robot ethics and draw its limits. What will we hold the robots responsible for?Will they have moral rules like us? With the increasing technology, artificial intelligence technologies will make robots smart. In this case, we will need to prepare new laws.
More information:[3]
References
[1] P. M. Asaro, “What should we want from a robot ethic?,” in Ethics and Robotics, M. Capurro and M. Nagenborg, Eds. Heidelberg: IOS Press, 2009, pp. 1–11.
[2] W. Wallach and C. Allen, Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. Oxford, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009.
[3] Research Ethics F. Operto, “Ethics in Advanced Robotics,” in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol.18, no. 1, pp.72- 78, March 2011.
