Towards a code of ethics for autonomous and self-adaptive systems

Software systems are playing an increasingly important role in many domains of our society. To ensure that software will support the public good, software engineers, who create and maintain the software, shall adhere to ethical principles. A joint task force of IEEE and ACM has brought such a set of principles together in a Code of Ethics. These principles describe responsibilities for software engineers and guidelines to assist them when making decisions in the benefit of public good. With the emergence of computing systems that take autonomous decisions, there is growing consensus that new ethical principles will be required. Since self-adaptive systems are characterized by autonomy, the need for new principles applies to these systems. Based on the Code of Ethics and leveraging on ongoing initiatives, we suggest an initial set of new ethical principles for autonomous and self-adaptive systems as an inspiration for an extended Code of Ethics for this important class of systems.