Ethics by Design Archives - ROBOPHILOSOPHY

October 26, 2019

From Logic Programming to Machine Ethics

Luís Moniz Pereira is one of the best known and most active machine ethicists in the world. Together with his colleague Ari Saptawijaya he wrote the article “From Logic Programming to Machine Ethics” for the “Handbuch Maschinenethik” (“Handbook Machine Ethics”). From the abstract: “This chapter investigates the appropriateness of Logic Programming-based reasoning to machine ethics, an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that emerges from the need of imbuing autonomous agents with the capacity for moral decision making. The first part of the chapter aims at identifying morality viewpoints, as studied in moral philosophy and psychology, which are amenable to computational modeling, and then mapping them to appropriate Logic Programming-based reasoning features. The identified viewpoints are covered by two morality themes: moral permissibility and the dual-process model. In the second part, various Logic Programming-based reasoning features are applied to model these identified morality viewpoints, via classic moral examples taken off-the-shelf from the literature. For this purpose, our QUALM system mainly employs a combination of the Logic Programming features of abduction, updating, and counterfactuals. These features are all supported jointly by Logic Programming tabling mechanisms. The applications are also supported by other existing Logic Programming based systems, featuring preference handling and probabilistic reasoning, which complement QUALM in addressing the morality viewpoints in question. Throughout the chapter, many references to our published work are given, providing further examples and details about each topic. Thus, this chapter can be envisaged as an entry point survey on the employment of Logic Programming for knowledge modelling and technically implementing machine ethics.” (Abstract) Springer VS published the “Handbuch Maschinenethik” in October 2019. Editor is Oliver Bendel (Zurich, Switzerland).

October 11, 2019October 11, 2019

A Markup Language for Moral Machines

A markup language is a machine-readable language for structuring and formatting texts and other data. The best known is the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Other well-known artifacts are SSML (for the adaptation of synthetic voices) and AIML (for artificial intelligence applications). We use markup languages to describe properties, affiliations and forms of representation of sections of a text or set of data. This is usually done by marking them with tags. In addition to tags, attributes and values can also be important. A student paper at the School of Business FHNW will describe and compare known markup languages. It will examine whether there is room for further artifacts of this kind. A markup language, which would be suitable for the morality in the written and spoken as well as the morally adequate display of pictures, videos and animations and the playing of sounds, could be called MOML (Morality Markup Language). Is such a language possible and helpful? Can it be used for moral machines? The paper will also deal with this. The supervisor of the project, which will last until the end of the year, is Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. Since 2012, he and his teams have created formulas and annotated decision trees for moral machines and a number of moral machines themselves, such as GOODBOT, LIEBOT, BESTBOT, and LADYBIRD.

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019

Ethical and Statistical Considerations in Models of Moral Judgments

Torty Sivill works at the Computer Science Department, University of Bristol. In August 2019 she published the article “Ethical and Statistical Considerations in Models of Moral Judgments”. “This work extends recent advancements in computational models of moral decision making by using mathematical and philosophical theory to suggest adaptations to state of the art. It demonstrates the importance of model assumptions and considers alternatives to the normal distribution when modeling ethical principles. We show how the ethical theories, utilitarianism and deontology can be embedded into informative prior distributions. We continue to expand the state of the art to consider ethical dilemmas beyond the Trolley Problem and show the adaptations needed to address this complexity. The adaptations made in this work are not solely intended to improve recent models but aim to raise awareness of the importance of interpreting results relative to assumptions made, either implicitly or explicitly, in model construction.” (Abstract) The article can be accessed via https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2019.00039/full.

August 2, 2019August 2, 2019

Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation for Care Robots

The article “Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation for Care Robots through BS 8611” by Bernd Carsten Stahl is part of the open access book “Pflegeroboter” (published in November 2018). From the abstract: “The concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has gained prominence in European research. It has been integrated into the EU’s Horizon 2020 research framework as well as a number of individual Member States’ research strategies. Elsewhere we have discussed how the idea of RRI can be applied to healthcare robots … and we have speculated what such an implementation might look like in social reality … In this paper I will explore how parallel developments reflect the reasoning in RRI. The focus of the paper will therefore be on the recently published standard on ‘Robots and robotic devices: Guide to the ethical design and application of robots and robotic systems’ … I will analyse the standard and discuss how it can be applied to care robots. The key question to be discussed is whether and to what degree this can be seen as an implementation of RRI in the area of care robotics.” Until July 2019 there were 80,000 downloads of the book and individual chapters, which indicates a lively interest in the topic. More information via www.springer.com/de/book/9783658226978.

July 30, 2019December 25, 2019

Development of a Morality Menu

Machine ethics produces moral and immoral machines. The morality is usually fixed, e.g. by programmed meta-rules and rules. The machine is thus capable of certain actions, not others. However, another approach is the morality menu (MOME for short). With this, the owner or user transfers his or her own morality onto the machine. The machine behaves in the same way as he or she would behave, in detail. Together with his teams, Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel developed several artifacts of machine ethics at his university from 2013 to 2018. For one of them, he designed a morality menu that has not yet been implemented. Another concept exists for a virtual assistant that can make reservations and orders for its owner more or less independently. In the article “The Morality Menu” the author introduces the idea of the morality menu in the context of two concrete machines. Then he discusses advantages and disadvantages and presents possibilities for improvement. A morality menu can be a valuable extension for certain moral machines. You can download the article here. In 2019, a morality menu for a robot will be developed at the School of Business FHNW.