What do we owe to intelligent robots?

Great technological advances in such areas as computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics have brought the advent of artificially intelligent robots within our reach within the next century. Against this background, the interdisciplinary field of machine ethics is concerned with the vita...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:AI & society Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 209 - 223
Main Author: Gordon, John-Stewart
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Springer London 01.03.2020
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Agents (artificial intelligence)
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Science
Control
Decision making
Engineering Economics
Ethics
Logistics
Marketing
Mechatronics
Methodology of the Social Sciences
Morality
Open Forum
Organization
Performing Arts
Reasoning
Robotics
Robots
Moral agency
Moral status
Artificially intelligent robots
Machine rights
Moral rights
Full ethical agents
ISSN:0951-5666, 1435-5655
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Great technological advances in such areas as computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics have brought the advent of artificially intelligent robots within our reach within the next century. Against this background, the interdisciplinary field of machine ethics is concerned with the vital issue of making robots “ethical” and examining the moral status of autonomous robots that are capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. The existence of such robots will deeply reshape our socio-political life. This paper focuses on whether such highly advanced yet artificially intelligent beings will deserve moral protection (in the form of being granted moral rights) once they become capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. I argue that we are obligated to grant them moral rights once they have become full ethical agents, i.e., subjects of morality. I present four related arguments in support of this claim and thereafter examine four main objections to the idea of ascribing moral rights to artificial intelligent robots.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0951-5666
1435-5655
DOI:10.1007/s00146-018-0844-6