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Concept
Machine ethics
Summary
Machine ethics (or machine morality, computational morality, or computational ethics) is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence concerned with adding or ensuring moral behaviors of man-made machines that use artificial intelligence, otherwise known as artificial intelligent agents. Machine ethics differs from other ethical fields related to engineering and technology. Machine ethics should not be confused with computer ethics, which focuses on human use of computers. It should also be distinguished from the philosophy of technology, which concerns itself with the grander social effects of technology.
Before the 21st century the ethics of machines had largely been the subject of science fiction literature, mainly due to computing and artificial intelligence (AI) limitations. Although the definition of "Machine Ethics" has evolved since, the term was coined by Mitchell Waldrop in the 1987 AI Magazine article "A Question of Responsibility":"However, one thing that is apparent from the above discussion is that intelligent machines will embody values, assumptions, and purposes, whether their programmers consciously intend them to or not. Thus, as computers and robots become more and more intelligent, it becomes imperative that we think carefully and explicitly about what those built-in values are. Perhaps what we need is, in fact, a theory and practice of machine ethics, in the spirit of Asimov’s three laws of robotics."
In 2004, Towards Machine Ethics was presented at the AAAI Workshop on Agent Organizations: Theory and Practice in which theoretical foundations for machine ethics were laid out.
It was in the AAAI Fall 2005 Symposium on Machine Ethics where researchers met for the first time to consider implementation of an ethical dimension in autonomous systems. A variety of perspectives of this nascent field can be found in the collected edition "Machine Ethics" that stems from the AAAI Fall 2005 Symposium on Machine Ethics.
Official source
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