Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
computer ethics is to determine what we should do in such cases,
i.e., to formulate policies to guide our actions. Of course, some
ethical situations confront us as individuals and some as a society.
Computer ethics includes consideration of both personal and social
policies for the ethical use of computer technology. [7]
Roboethics
3
and its precursor, computer ethics, are fields of study founded
by Norbert Wiener during World War II while he was helping to develop
an anti-aircraft cannon capable of shooting down fast warplanes. One
part of the cannon had to locate and track a plane, then predict and cal-
culate its likely trajectory and instruct another part of the cannon to fire
its shells. This work set Wiener thinking about the ethical implications of
designing machines to kill. But the emphasis in roboethics is not only to
develop an artificial ethics to be embodied in the design of robot software
and hardware, it is also to create a
human
ethics to be followed by the re-
searchers who design and build robots and those who own and use them.
The responsibility for the creation of a whole new ethics, brings with it a
certain amount of freedom to set the standard as we wish, a standard that
should be consistent with our normal ethical standards and, presumably,
one that contributes towards an acceptable social order.
One of the earliest AI programs to create ethical quandaries was Joseph
Weizenbaum's chatterbot ELIZA.
4
Some of the staff and students at MIT
who had conversations with ELIZA became emotionally attached to the
program and shared some of their intimate thoughts with it. When he
discovered this Weizenbaum was concerned by the ethics of creating a
program that could have such an effect on its human conversation part-
ners and felt impelled by this concern to write his topic
Computer Power
and Human Reason
, a classic study in computer ethics. In the thirty years
following the publication of Weizenbaum's topic AI made such strides
that computer ethics and roboethics are now hot topics, both in the wider
world of ethics (a branch of philosophy) and in the fields of computing,
AI in general and, most recently and specifically, in robotics.
Should Humans Create Robots?
In 1964 Norbert Wiener predicted in his topic
God and Golem, Inc.
that
the quest to create AI would have a direct effect on mankind's ethical and
religious values. Those with a religious leaning might well claim that, in
3
A recently coined term. The first international symposium on roboethics was held in 2004.
4
See the section “The First 50 Years of NLP” in Chapter 7.
