Philosophy of Cognitive Science > Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence > Ethics of Artificial Intelligence > Machine Ethics
Machine Ethics
Edited by Jeffrey White (Okinawa Institute Of Science And Technology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
About this topic
Summary | Machine ethics is about artificial moral agency. Machine ethicists wonder why people, human beings, other organisms, do what they do when they do it, what makes these things the right things to do, and how to articulate this process (ideally) in an independent artificial system (and not in a biological child, as an alternative). So, this category includes entries on agency, especially moral agency, and also on what it means to be an agent in general. On the empirical side, machine ethicists interpret rapidly advancing work in cognitive science and psychology alongside that of work in robotics and AI through traditional ethical frameworks, helping to frame robotics research in terms of ethical theory. For example, intelligent machines are (most) often modeled after biological systems, and in any event are often "made sense of" in terms of biological systems, so there is work that must be done in this process of interpretation and integration. More theoretical work wonders about the relative status afforded artificial agents given degrees of autonomy, origin, level of complexity, corporate-institutional and legal standing and so on, as well as research into the essence o consciousness and of moral agency regardless of natural or artificial instantiation. So understood, machine ethics is in the middle of a maelstrom of current research activity, with direct bearing on traditional ethics and with extensive popular implications as well. |
Key works | Allen et al 2005, Wallach et al 2008, Tonkens 2012, Tonkens 2009, Müller & Bostrom 2014, White 2013, White 2015, |
Introductions | Anderson & Anderson 2007, Segun 2021, Powers 2011 |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Algorithmic Fairness (17)
- Artificial Intelligence Safety (175)
- Autonomous Vehicles (3)
- Autonomous Weapons (2)
- Moral Status of Artificial Systems (471)
- Robot Ethics (407)
- Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Misc (917)
- Robot Ethics (407)
- Computer Ethics (971 | 490)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |