IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 30

should we be confident that the same program will
still appear ethical when the AI finds itself in a different setting tomorrow? If "ethics" is not a static thing,
then must the programming of AI for ethics necessarily be a dynamic program that can "learn" and adjust?
If so, then what figure of merit do you think should
be used to automate the process of guiding the learning? If not (that is, the program does not lea r n a nd
does not adjust over time), then is the resulting
"ethics" still valid?

If I am a strict utilitarian and you are a strict
Kantian deontologist (and we are both humans), then
you and I are likely to differ in our judgments about
what is the right thing to do in a particular situation.

Joanna Bryson has famously said that
"robots should be slaves."

Will reading the machine's program necessarily
give us a clear picture of why the machine made a
particular decision?

If we program ethics into AI (again, let's pretend we find
that we someday can), will it be reasonable to treat the
resulting AI as a mechanical slave? Or should an entity
(even a silicon-based entity) that can tell the difference
between right and wrong be giving more respect than the
status of a slave?

Do you think that an entity being able to tell the
difference between right and wrong is a prerequisite
for having ethics?
What are your views of how we judge
HUMANS as ethical beings?

Note that learning algorithms like neural nets are notoriously difficult for humans to understand once launched.

What do you think is the single biggest hurdle to
overcome in the road to programming ethics into AI?
Would you characterize that hurdle as a technical programming problem, or the need to better understand
HUMAN ethical reasoning before trying to program
that reasoning into a machine?

You have personal thoughts about this question.

And how do those views affect your answer to the
question, "Can we program ethics into AI?"

Does AI have to achieve ethical behaviors
in a manner similar to how humans achieve
ethical behaviors in order to declare the
AI "ethical?"
Are or should machines be declared to BE ethical
as long as their behaviors APPEAR ethical to an outside observer?

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I am unlikely to declare that you are unethical merely
because we come to a different conclusion about a
particular case; we just disagree about the question at
hand. Are we likely to give a machine programmed to be
ethical the same kind of consideration when the machine
disagrees with our judgment?

But separate from your personal opinion about our question, what do you think the general public, in the main,
thinks about the question? What do you think AI researchers, on the whole, think about the question?

Given your opinions on the probability of success,
and the value of the goal in the first place, do you
think society should actively pursue the goal of
programming ethics into AI?
If no, why not? If yes, then how much of a priority (in
terms of public funding) should the project be?

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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June 2017
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017
