Susan Leigh Anderson

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at University of Connecticut

The newly emerging field of machine ethics (Anderson and Anderson 2006) is concerned with adding an ethical dimension to machines. 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 machines toward human users, and perhaps other...

Autonomous machines will soon play a big role in our lives. It's time they learned how to behave ethically

Using Asimov’s “Bicentennial Man” as a springboard, a number of metaethical issues concerning the emerging field of machine ethics are discussed. Although the ultimate goal of machine ethics is to create autonomous ethical machines, this presents a number of challenges. A good way to begin the task of making ethics computable is to create a program...

We have implemented a simulation of a robot functioning in the domain of eldercarewhose behavior is completely determined by an ethical principle. Using a subset of the perceptions and duties that will be required of such a robot, this simulation demonstrates selection of ethically preferable actions in real time using a case-supported principle-ba...

The new field of machine ethics is concerned with giving machines ethical principles, or a procedure for discovering a way to resolve the ethical dilemmas they might encounter, enabling them to function in an ethically responsible manner through their own ethical decision making. Developing ethics for machines, in contrast to developing ethics for...

Robotics researchers have been focusing on developing autonomous and human-like intelligent robots that are able to plan, navigate, manipulate objects, and interact with humans in both static and dynamic environments. These capabilities, however, are usually developed for direct interactions with people in controlled environments, and evaluated pri...

Technological advances are enabling roles for machines that present novel ethical challenges. The study of 'AI ethics' has emerged to confront these challenges, and connects perspectives from philosophy, computer science, law, and economics. Less represented in these interdisciplinary efforts is the perspective of cognitive science. We propose a fr...

Since it is of critical importance that autonomous systems, whether software or hardware, that interact with human beings (and perhaps other sentient beings as well) behave in an ethical manner, we consider six possible approaches to effecting this. We argue that the first five approaches are unsatisfactory and defend the last approach, the approac...

Ethical and explainable artificial intelligence is an interdisciplinary research area involving computer science, philosophy, logic, and social sciences, etc. For an ethical autonomous system, the ability to justify and explain its decision-making is a crucial aspect of transparency and trustworthiness. This paper takes a Value-Driven Agent (VDA) a...

We propose a framework for incorporating public opinion into policy making in situations where values are in conflict. This framework advocates creating vignettes representing value choices, eliciting the public's opinion on these choices, and using machine learning to extract principles that can serve as succinct statements of the policies implied...

OSX distribution of GenEth as described in GenEth: A general ethical dilemma analyzer (Paladyn, 2018). Video demonstration available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-VI_Yr3KzQ&t=3s.

The field of machine ethics is concerned with the question of how to embed ethical behaviors, or a means to determine ethical behaviors, into artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The goal is to produce artificial moral agents (AMAs) that are either implicitly ethical (designed to avoid unethical consequences) or explicitly ethical (designed to beh...

Should an artificial intelligence (AI) program that appears to have a better success rate than human pathologists be used to replace or augment humans in detecting cancer cells? We argue that some concerns—the “black-box” problem (ie, the unknowability of how output is derived from input) and automation bias (overreliance on clinical decision suppo...

For an autonomous system, the ability to justify and explain its decision making is crucial to improve its transparency and trustworthiness. This paper proposes an argumentation-based approach to represent, justify and explain the decision making of a value driven agent (VDA). By using a newly defined formal language, some implicit knowledge of a V...

We argue that ethically significant behavior of autonomous systems should be guided by explicit ethical principles determined through a consensus of ethicists. Such a consensus is likely to emerge in many areas in which intelligent autonomous systems are apt to be deployed and for the actions they are liable to undertake, as we are more likely to a...

In this paper, a case-supported principle-based behavior paradigm is proposed to help ensure ethical behavior of autonomous machines. We argue that ethically significant behavior of autonomous systems should be guided by explicit ethical principles determined through a consensus of ethicists. Such a consensus is likely to emerge in many areas in wh...

The chapter focuses on “The Bicentennial Man” for a discussion of Machine Metaethics. It argues that a good idea is to begin to make ethics computable by creating a program enabling a machine to act as an ethical advisor for human beings facing traditional ethical dilemmas. The ultimate goal of Machine Ethics, to create autonomous ethical machines,...

This chapter discusses ethics involved with the use of artificial intelligent technologies in behavioral and mental health care. A foundational overview of medical ethics and current ethical codes and guidelines that pertain to the use of technology is provided. Emerging ethical issues are then discussed along with specific recommendations to addre...

To feel comfortable allowing healthcare robots to interact with human beings, we must ensure that they act in an ethically responsible manner, following an acceptable ethical principle(s). Giving robots ethical principles to guide their behavior results in their being ethical agents; yet we argue that it is the human designers, not the robots, who...

A paradigm of case-supported principle-based behavior (CPB) is proposed to help ensure ethical behavior of autonomous machines. We argue that ethically significant behavior of autonomous systems should be guided by explicit ethical principles determined through a consensus of ethicists. Such a consensus is likely to emerge in many areas in which au...

We assert that ethical decision-making is, to a degree, computable. Some claim that no actions can be said to be ethically correct because all value judgments are relative either to societies or individuals. We maintain, however, along with most ethicists, that there is agreement on the ethically relevant features in many particular cases of ethica...

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a paradigm of case-supported principle-based behavior (CPB) to help ensure ethical behavior of autonomous machines. The requirements, methods, implementation and evaluation components of the CPB paradigm are detailed. Design/methodology/approach – The authors argue that ethically significant behavior of autonom...

We contend that ethically significant behavior of autonomous systems should be guided by explicit ethical principles determined through a consensus of ethicists. To provide assistance in developing these ethical principles, we have developed GenEth, a general ethical dilemma analyzer that, through a dialog with ethicists, codifies ethical principle...

A paradigm of case-supported principle-based behavior is proposed to help ensure ethical behavior of intelligent autonomous machines. The requirements, methods, implementation, and tests of this paradigm are detailed.

Having discovered a decision principle for a well-known prima facie duty theory in biomedical ethics to resolve particular cases of a common type of ethical dilemma, we developed three applications: a medical ethics advisor system, a medication reminder system and an instantiation of this system in a Nao robot. We are now developing a general, auto...

The newly emerging field of machine ethics is concerned with ensuring that the behavior of machines toward human users is ethically acceptable. There are domains in which intelligent machines could play a significant role in improving our quality of life as long as concerns about their behavior can be overcome by ensuring that they behave ethically...

In our early work on attempting to develop ethics for a machine, we first established that it is possible to create a program that can compute the ethically correct action when faced with a moral dilemma using a well-known ethical theory (Anderson et al. 2006). The theory we chose, Hedonistic Act Utilitarianism, was ideally suited to the task becau...

Once people understand that machine ethics is concerned with how intelligent machines should behave, they often maintain that Isaac Asimov has already given us an ideal set of rules for such machines. They have in mind Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A...

Practical ethics typically addresses itself to such general issues as whether we ought to carry out abortions or slaughter animals for meat, and, if so, under what circumstances. The answers to these questions have a useful role to play in the development of social policy and legislation. They are, arguably, less useful to the ordinary individual w...

We have combined a bottom-up casuistry approach with a top-down implementation of an ethical theory to develop a system that uses machine-learning to abstract relationships between prima facie ethical duties from cases of particular types of ethical dilemmas where ethicists are in agreement as to the correct action. This system has discovered a nov...

This chapter contains section titled:

Building on our previous achievements in machine ethics (Anderson et al. 2006a-b, 2007, 2008), we are developing and implementing a general interactive approach to analyzing ethical dilemmas with the goal to apply it toward the end of codifying the ethical principles that will help resolve ethical dilemmas that intelligent systems will encounter in...

This paper is a summary and evaluation of work presented at the AAAI 2005 Fall Symposium on Machine Ethics that brought together participants from the fields of Computer Science and Philosophy to the end of clarifying the nature of this newly emerging field and discussing different approaches one could take towards realizing the ultimate goal of cr...

We consider the consequences for human beings of attempting to create ethical robots, a goal of the new field of AI that has been called Machine Ethics. We argue that the concerns that have been raised are either unfounded, or can be minimized, and that many benefits for human beings can come from this research. In particular, working on machine et...

To make ethics computable, we've adopted an approach to ethics that involves considering multiple prima facie duties in deciding how one should act in an ethical dilemma. We believe this approach is more likely to capture the complexities of ethical decision making than a single, absolute-duty ethical theory. However, it requires a decision procedu...

Machine ethics is concerned with how machines behave toward human users and other machines. It aims to create a machine that's guided by an acceptable ethical principle or set of principles in the decisions it makes about possible courses of action it could take. As ethics experts continue to progress toward consensus concerning the right way to be...

As part of a larger Machine Ethics Project, we are developing an ethical advisor that provides guidance to health care workers faced with ethical dilemmas. MedEthEx is an implementation of Beauchamp’s and Childress’ Principles of Biomedical Ethics that harnesses machine learning techniques to abstract decision principles from cases in a particular...

As part of a larger Machine Ethics Project, we are developing an ethical advisor that provides guidance to health care workers faced with ethical dilemmas. MedEthEx is an implementation of Beauchamp's and Childress' Principles of Biomedical Ethics that harnesses machine learning techniques to abstract decision principles from cases in a particular...

Machine ethics, in contrast to computer ethics, is concerned with the behavior of machines towards human users and other machines. It involves adding an ethical dimension to machines. Our increasing reliance on machine intelligence that effects change in the world can be dangerous without some restraint. We explore the implementation of two action-...

We contend that the ethical ramifications of machine behavior, as well as recent and potential developments in machine autonomy, necessitate adding an ethical dimension to at least some machines. We lay the theoretical foundation for machine ethics by discussing the rationale for, the feasibilty of, and the benefits of adding an ethical dimension t...

In response to the difficulty of teaching an increasingly large number of students who are ill prepared for the sort of abstract thinking and well-structured essay writing that are essential to the field of Philosophy, I have discovered a five-step method for teaching students in my Philosophy and Social Ethics course how to examine any ethical iss...

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous violinist analogy to justify a woman’s right to abort an unintended pregnancy may not have succeeded in its primary aim, since it can be argued that she did not properly distinguish between killing and not saving someone’s life, but it is very useful to use as a starting point in exploring the issue of whether we ever...

L'A. souleve les problemes qui se posent des lors que l'on veut developper une theorie pratique de la responsabilite morale: 1) le probleme du soi agent de l'action, 2) celui de la volonte libre, 3) celui du choix entre l'action bonne et l'action mauvaise, 4) celui de la connaissance du statut de l'action choisie

As part of a larger Machine Ethics Project, we are developing an ethical advisor that provides guidance to health care workers faced with ethical dilemmas. MedEthEx is an implementation of Beauchamp's and Childress' Principles of Biomedical Ethics that harnesses machine learning techniques to abstract decision principles from cases in a particular...