Ways of Seeing- a survey of the possibility of the generation of ethical robots and its significance to human beings

“Ways of Seeing—A survey of the possibility of the generation of ethical robots and its significance to human beings.”

Paris Shih 96501026

Dec. 10, 2008

Ways of Seeing—A survey of the possibility of the generation of ethical robots and its significance to human beings.

In this research, I aim to focus on ethical robots. Is making an ethical robot a possible goal? If the answer is yes, how can we approach this goal? What kinds of theories can we base on? In addition, what is the purpose of achieving ethical robots? In other words, what is the significance of making them? In the end, I am going to investigate the question that how are we human beings supposed to view ethical robots? Are we able to view them as human beings since they can carry out so-called “ethical” actions? Will we simply view them as the traditional robots which can only receive humans’ assignments? Or might there be a new way for us to view the ethical robots? On the other hand, how will ethical robots view us? Taking us as the same kind? Having an awareness and recognition of “human beings” which are supposed to be different from them? Or there will also be a brand new way for them to view us?

Michael Decker (2007). Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis. Can Human Be Replaced by Autonomous Robots?

Overall, in this article, Decker points out attitudes toward autonomous robots from both sides—one side believes the possibility of creating an autonomous robot (and also supports the attempt to create it). The other side is basically against this kind of invention. At first, I assumed Decker’s viewpoint tended to the latter one, due to the fact that he uses lots of evidence to convince us that it is difficult for producing a robot possessing ethical thinking like the human being’s. Nevertheless, in the end, Decker’s attitude becomes more neutral—if an autonomous robot can actually carry out ethical behaviors based on their own will—and be safe to humans—then why not use it?

James Gips (1991) Android Epistemology K. Ford, C. Glymour and P. Hayes (eds.) MIT Press. Toward the Ethical Robot

In this article, Gips points out three approaches to define ethical robots, and he also carries out the problems of these three approaches. The first one is Consequentiality theories which will judge the actions by their consequences. The goal for ethical robots hence becomes “producing the greatest pleasures by these actions for persons”. But the question is, will there be some sacrifices if you only care about the making of maximum of people’s pleasures? Plus, who is going to be counted as a “person”? The second one is deontological theories which focus on the justice of the actions themselves rather than the consequences they make. However, there might be conflicts within the actions themselves. For example, “don’t kill” and “keep your promise” might conflict to each other while a robot makes a promise to kill someone. The third one is virtue-based theories, which comes back to Plato and Aristotle’s terms of ethics, putting the question of “What shall I be?” rather than “What shall I do?” In the end, Gips provides us two reasons to invent ethical robots. One is using them as ethics advisor since human beings might be away from ethics sometimes but ethical robots under the well-designed program will not. The other one is that through making ethical robots, we humans will be given a chance to investigate what on earth is actually “ethics”.

Michael Anderson (2006) and Susan Leigh Anderson. IEEE Computer Society. Machine Ethics