Abstract
Questions about moral machines are ever-present in contemporary discourse about robots and artificial intelligence. What would a machine that acts morally be like? Is it actually possible to build one? Should we work toward this goal and why? Would observable moral behavior be sufficient for a machine to count as a moral being, or would it need some ‘subjective’ foundation in its inner workings? In other words: Would it be enough for a ‘moral machine’ to behave as if it were sensitive to our moral affairs, or would it have to be able to sense and understand our moral concerns? The present paper focuses on a few selected aspects connecting moral machines to the so-called responsibility gap. By introducing a number of clarifications and a certain perspective on the issues at hand, the question of whether a technological issue should be addressed by approximating machines to humans is answered in the negative. A reflection and debate on these and further similar issues would, therefore, have to shift its focus from the isolated technological artifacts to the much wider contexts of application and socio-technological interactions.
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Notes
- 1.
From here on, I will use the term ‘artificial agent’ as a general term for robots and artificially intelligent artifacts.
- 2.
For a lucid and exhaustive summary of the debate see (Noorman 2018).
- 3.
- 4.
Of course, as mentioned earlier, there are many settings where personal supervision and control would eliminate the advantages of artificial agents in the first place. For these settings, option 2 or 3 is obviously preferable.
- 5.
The exception would be terrorists who do not care about anyone’s (including their own) benefit when employing dangerous artificial agents. But even the military has no interest in using systems for destruction that it cannot control in any of the described ways, as noted by Noorman and Johnson 2014.
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Remmers, P. (2020). Would Moral Machines Close the Responsibility Gap?. In: Beck, B., Kühler, M. (eds) Technology, Anthropology, and Dimensions of Responsibility. Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie , vol 1. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04896-7_10
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