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Designing a machine to learn about the ethics of robotics: the N-reasons platform

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Abstract

We can learn about human ethics from machines. We discuss the design of a working machine for making ethical decisions, the N-Reasons platform, applied to the ethics of robots. This N-Reasons platform builds on web based surveys and experiments, to enable participants to make better ethical decisions. Their decisions are better than our existing surveys in three ways. First, they are social decisions supported by reasons. Second, these results are based on weaker premises, as no exogenous expertise (aside from that provided by the participants) is needed to seed the survey. Third, N-Reasons is designed to support experiments so we can learn how to improve the platform. We sketch experimental results that show the platform is a success as well as pointing to ways it can be improved.

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Abbreviations

NERD:

Norms Evolving in Response to Dilemmas survey platform

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially funded by Genome Canada through the offices of Genome British Columbia. Thanks to the NERD research team for support and the intellectual environment that makes this work possible, to this journal’s anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper, and to our participants for their enthusiastic support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics (CAE), The University of British Columbia (UBC), 227-6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada

    Peter Danielson

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  1. Peter Danielson
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Correspondence to Peter Danielson.

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Danielson, P. Designing a machine to learn about the ethics of robotics: the N-reasons platform. Ethics Inf Technol 12, 251–261 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-009-9214-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-009-9214-x

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