Dr Vincent Müller publishes Stanford Encyclopedia Article on Ethics of AI and Robotics

The extensive article explores ethical issues with AI systems as objects and subjects, whilst discussing a possible future AI superintelligence leading to a “singularity”.

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics was first published in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Dr Vincent Müller in April 2020.

The encyclopedia is a resource of nearly 1600 entries, bringing together the research of scholars from around the world to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are digital technologies that will have significant impact on the development of humanity in the near future. They have raised fundamental questions about what we should do with these systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve, and how we can control these.

After the Introduction to the field (§1), the main themes (§2) of this article are: Ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e., tools made and used by humans. This includes issues of privacy (§2.1) and manipulation (§2.2), opacity (§2.3) and bias (§2.4), human-robot interaction (§2.5), employment (§2.6), and the effects of autonomy (§2.7). Then AI systems as subjects, i.e., ethics for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (§2.8) and artificial moral agency (§2.9). Finally, the problem of a possible future AI superintelligence leading to a “singularity” (§2.10). We close with a remark on the vision of AI (§3).

Read the full article at The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy