Perspectives about artificial moral agents

The pursuit of AMAs is complicated. Disputes about the development, design, moral agency, and future projections for these systems have been reported in the literature. This empirical study explores these controversial matters by surveying (AI) Ethics scholars with the aim of establishing a more coherent and informed debate. Using Q-methodology, we show the wide breadth of viewpoints and approaches to artificial morality. Five main perspectives about AMAs emerged from our data and were subsequently interpreted and discussed: (i) Machine Ethics: The Way Forward; (ii) Ethical Verification: Safe and Sufficient; (iii) Morally Uncertain Machines: Human Values to Avoid Moral Dystopia; (iv) Human Exceptionalism: Machines Cannot Moralize; and (v) Machine Objectivism: Machines as Superior Moral Agents. A potential source of these differing perspectives is the failure of Machine Ethics to be widely observed or explored as an applied ethic and more than a futuristic end. Our study helps improve the foundations for an informed debate about AMAs, where contrasting views and agreements are disclosed and appreciated. Such debate is crucial to realize an interdisciplinary approach to artificial morality, which allows us to gain insights into morality while also engaging practitioners.

The Morality Menu Project

The discipline of machine ethics examines, designs, and produces moral machines. The artificial morality is usually pre-programmed by a manufacturer or developer. However, another approach is the more flexible morality menu (MOME). With this, owners or users replicate their own moral preferences onto a machine. A team at the FHNW implemented a MOME for MOBO (a chatbot) in 2019/2020. In this article, the author introduces the idea of the MOME, presents the MOBO-MOME project, and discusses advantages and disadvantages of such an approach. It turns out that a morality menu could be a valuable extension for certain moral machines.

Moral Machines: Using Natural Morality to Guide Artificial Morality

Increasingly autonomous machines are entering our everyday lives and it is important that they do not make it worse. Apart from safety, the development of artificial morality is extensively occupying philosophers and engineers. Importantly, the only kind of morality we have known is our own. In this paper, I overview the biological and evolutionary basis of human morality and the main approaches to artificial morality. I then discuss important aspects of natural morality that should be of crucial consideration for the field of artificial morality if we want to make future human-robot societies sustainable and flourishing.