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Robots, ethics and language

Published: 05 January 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Following the classical philosophical definition of ethics and the psychological research on problem solving and decision making, the issue of ethics becomes concrete and opens up the way for the creation of IT systems that can support handling of moral problems. Also in a sense that is similar to the way humans handle their moral problems. The processes of communicating information and receiving instructions are linguistic by nature. Moreover, autonomous and heteronomous ethical thinking is expressed by way of language use. Indeed, the way we think ethically is not only linguistically mediated but linguistically construed -- whether we think for example in terms of conviction and certainty (meaning heteronomy) or in terms of questioning and inquiry (meaning autonomy). A thorough analysis of the language that is used in these processes is therefore of vital importance for the development of the above mentioned tools and methods. Given that we have a clear definition based on philosophical theories and on research on human decision-making and linguistics, we can create and apply systems that can handle ethical issues. Such systems will help us to design robots and to prescribe their actions, to communicate and cooperate with them, to control the moral aspects of robots' actions in real life applications, and to create embedded systems that allow continuous learning and adaptation.

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cover image ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society  Volume 45, Issue 3
Special Issue on Ethicomp
September 2015
446 pages
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 January 2016
Published in SIGCAS Volume 45, Issue 3

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Author Tags

  1. autonomy
  2. communication
  3. decision-making
  4. design
  5. ethics
  6. independent agents
  7. language
  8. moral
  9. philosophy
  10. robots

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  • (2023)Automated guided vehicles with a mounted serial manipulator: A systematic literature reviewHeliyon10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e159509:5(e15950)Online publication date: May-2023

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