Wendell Wallach

• Chair at Yale University

The human-built environment is increasingly being populated by artificial agents that, through artificial intelligence (AI), are capable of acting autonomously. The software controlling these autonomous systems is, to-date, "ethically blind" in the sense that the decision-making capabilities of such systems does not involve any explicit moral reaso...

Autonomous and intelligent systems (AIS) facilitate a wide range of beneficial applications across a variety of different domains. However, technical characteristics such as unpredictabil-ity and lack of transparency, as well as potential unintended consequences, pose considerable challenges to the current gov-ernance infrastructure. Furthermore, t...

This policy brief proposes a group of twenty (G20) coordinating committee for the governance of artificial intelligence (CCGAI) to plan and coordinate on a multilateral level the mitigation of AI risks. The G20 is the appropriate regime complex for such a metagovernance mechanism, given the involvement of the largest economies and their highest pol...

This policy brief proposes to the Group of Twenty (G20) the implementation of a Coordinating Committee for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence (CCGAI) to effectively coordinate on a global level the prevention and mitigation of direct cyber-physical threats and long-term structural imbalances. The G20 is the appropriate institution for a CCGA...

Rapidly emerging technologies, such as AI and robotics, present a serious challenge to traditional models of government regulation. These technologies are advancing so quickly that in many sectors, traditional regulation cannot keep up, given the cumbersome procedural and bureaucratic procedures and safeguards that modern legislative and rulemaking...

For many innovations, oversight fits nicely within existing governance mechanisms; nevertheless, others pose unique public health, environmental, and ethical challenges. Synthetic artemisinin, for example, has many precursors in laboratory-developed drugs that emulate natural forms of the same drug. The policy challenges posed by synthetic artemisi...

A 10-point plan toward fashioning a proposal to ban some---if not all---lethal autonomous weapons.

The current debate over technological unemployment sacrifices significant analytic value because it is one-sided, limited in scope, and sequential. We show that analyzing technological innovations in parallel with apparently independent socio-economic innovations and trends offers important analytical benefits. Our focus is on socio-economic innova...

The development of autonomous, robotic weaponry is progressing rapidly. Many observers agree that banning the initiation of lethal activity by autonomous weapons is a worthy goal. Some disagree with this goal, on the grounds that robots may equal and exceed the ethical conduct of human soldiers on the battlefield. Those who seek arms-control agreem...

In this chapter, Wendell Wallach begins by reviewing the history and current state of the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. He also distinguishes between two types of ethical issues associated with advances in the field. Roboethics concerns ethical issues that arise from the use of robots in our homes and workplaces. These include such...

Research on approaches for implementing moral decision-making capabilities within AI systems is contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of moral acumen. In addition to being able to reason, consciousness and understanding, a theory of mind, social skills, cooperating with other agents, the ability to solve frame problems, being embodied,...

Robots with even limited sensitivity to ethical considerations and the ability to factor those considerations into their choices and actions will open up new markets. However, if robots fail to adequately accommodate human laws and values in their behaviour, there will be demands for regulations that limit their use. Over the next twenty years, adv...

Purpose In spite of highly publicized competitions where computers have prevailed over humans, the intelligence of computer systems still remains quite limited in comparison to that of humans. Present day computers provide plenty of information but lack wisdom. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether reliance on computers with limited i...

What roles or functions does consciousness fulfill in the making of moral decisions? Willartificial agents capable of making appropriate decisions in morally charged situations requiremachine consciousness? Should the capacity to make moral decisions be considered an attributeessential for being designated a fully conscious agent? Research on the pro...

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...

Building artificial moral agents (AMAs) underscores the fragmentary character of presently available models of human ethical behavior. It is a distinctly different enterprise from either the attempt by moral philosophers to illuminate the “ought” of ethics or the research by cognitive scientists directed at revealing the mechanisms that influence m...

Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in general, comprehensive models of human cognition. Such models aim to explain higher-order cognitive faculties, such as deliberation and planning. Given a computational representation, the validity of these models can be tested in computer simulations such as software agents or embodied robots. Th...

The implementation of moral decision-making abilities in AI is a natural and necessary extension to the social mechanisms of autonomous software agents and robots. Engineers exploring design strategies for systems sen- sitive to moral considerations in their choices and ac- tions will need to determine what role ethical theory should play in defini...

The challenge of designing computer systems and robots with the ability to make moral judgments is stepping out of science fiction and moving into the laboratory. Engineers and scholars, anticipating practical necessities, are writing articles, participating in conference workshops, and initiating a few experiments directed at substantiating rudime...

Machine ethics, machine morality, artificial morality, and computational ethics are all terms for an emerging field of study that seeks to implement moral decision-making faculties in computers and robots. Machine ethics is not merely science fiction but a topic that requires serious consideration given the rapid emergence of increasingly complex a...

The challenge of designing computer systems and robots with the ability to make moral judgments has stepped out of sci-ence fiction and moved into the laboratory. Engineers and scholars, anticipating practical necessities, are writing arti-cles, participating in conference workshops, and initiating a few experiments directed at substantiating rudim...

A principal goal of the discipline of artificial morality is to design artificial agents to act as if they are moral agents. Intermediate goals of artificial morality are directed at building into AI systems sensitivity to the values, ethics, and legality of activities. The development of an effective foundation for the field of artificial morality...

The implementation of moral decision-making abilities in AI is a natural and necessary extension to the so-cial mechanisms of autonomous software agents and an-droids. Engineers exploring design strategies for sys-tems sensitive to moral considerations in their choices and actions will need to determine what role ethical theory should play in defin...

Hybrid Moral (Ro)bots If neither a pure top-down approach nor a bottom-up approach is fully adequate for the design of effective AMAs, then some hybrid will be necessary. Furthermore, as noted, the top-down, bottom-up dichotomy is somewhat simplistic. Engineers commonly start with a top-down analysis of complex tasks to direct the bottom-up assembl...

Put 'em Together and What Have You Got? In the previous two chapters, we have described some basic computational components that may be part of the tool kit for building AMAs. Assembling the pieces into a single agent is not a trivial task, however. For AMAs to have a more complete repertoire of cognitive capacities, an overall architecture is need...