Moral Machines Teaching Robots Right from Wrong

by Wallach, Wendell; Allen, Colin

• ISBN13: 9780195374049
• ISBN10: 0195374045
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach arguethat as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors argue that even if full moral agency formachines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As theauthors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics.

Author Biography

Colin Allen is a Professor of History & Philosophy of Science and of Cognitive Science at Indiana University.
Wendell Wallach is a consultant and writer and is affiliated with Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 3
Why Machine Morality?	p. 13
Engineering Morality	p. 25
Does Humanity Want Computers Making Moral Decisions?	p. 37
Can (Ro)bots Really Be Moral?	p. 55
Philosophers, Engineers, and the Design of AMAs	p. 73
Top-Down Morality	p. 83
Bottom-Up and Developmental Approaches	p. 99
Merging Top-Down and Bottom-Up	p. 117
Beyond Vaporware?	p. 125
Beyond Reason	p. 139
A More Human-Like AMA	p. 171
Dangers, Rights, and Responsibilities	p. 189
Epilogue-(Ro)bot Minds and Human Ethics	p. 215
Notes	p. 219
Bibliography	p. 235
Index	p. 263
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