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Are Robots to be Created in Our Own Image? Testing the Ethical Equivalence of Robots and Humans

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Abstract

Service robots need to adhere to the ethical expectations of the people with which they interact. Several research groups have developed methods for implementing artificial morality for robots. The hidden assumption underlying this work is that people hold artificial systems to the same ethical standards as humans. In this sense, humans and robots are considered ethically equivalent. However, this assumption remains untested. This paper presents a series of survey-based studies to measure people’s opinions about acceptable and ethical behavior for robots and how this compares to proper and ethical conduct for human caregivers. As such, we assess the assumption that behavior acceptable for humans is also acceptable for robots. In a series of surveys with different samples and methodologies, we find little evidence for rejecting the assumption that people hold artificial systems to the same ethical standards as humans. In the absence of evidence against this widely held assumption, we conclude that ethical norms governing human-robot interaction can be modeled on existing moral norms regulating human-human interaction.

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Data Availability

All materials, data, and code used in this paper can be freely downloaded from https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GPCWQ.

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Funding

No funding was received for the research covered in this paper. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychology, Biology, and College of Engineering Cincinnati, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Dieter Vanderelst

  2. Department of Psychology Cincinnati, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Corinne Jorgenson

  3. SKEMA Business School, Université Côte d’Azur (GREDEG), Campus Grand Paris, 5, quai Marcel Dassault, 92150, Suresnes Cedex, France

    Ali I. Ozkes

  4. Institute for Public Management & Governance, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Jurgen Willems

Authors
  1. Dieter Vanderelst
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  2. Corinne Jorgenson
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  3. Ali I. Ozkes
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  4. Jurgen Willems
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dieter Vanderelst or Jurgen Willems.

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Informed Consent

Studies 1, 2, 3, and 6 were conducted at the University of Cincinnati and were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Participants provided informed consent, and all data were anonymized. Studies 4 and 5 were conducted at the University of Hamburg, Germany. In accordance with local regulations, IRB approval was not required for these surveys. Participants provided informed consent, and all data were anonymized.

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Vanderelst, D., Jorgenson, C., Ozkes, A.I. et al. Are Robots to be Created in Our Own Image? Testing the Ethical Equivalence of Robots and Humans. Int J of Soc Robotics 15, 85–99 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-022-00940-8

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