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Machine Morality

How Machines Can Advance Ethics

Susan Leigh Anderson and Michael Anderson relate how their attempts to build ethical machines have advanced their understanding of ethics.

Our current research is concerned with the newly emerging field of machine ethics. Unlike computer ethics, which has traditionally focused on ethical issues surrounding humans’ use of machines, machine ethics is concerned with ensuring that the behavior of the machines themselves is ethically acceptable. This requires that ethical decision-making be computable, at least to some degree.

Attempting to make ethical decision-making computable requires, first, that we settle on an existing ethical theory, or at least an approach to ethical decision-making that appears to have merit. After that, the theory or approach must be made precise enough to be programmed into a machine.

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