The seven troubles with norm-compliant robots

Many researchers from robotics, machine ethics, and adjacent fields seem to assume that norms represent good behavior that social robots should learn to benefit their users and society. We would like to complicate this view and present seven key troubles with norm-compliant robots: (1) norm biases, (2) paternalism (3) tyrannies of the majority, ...

Care Ethics and the Future of Work: a Different Voice

The discourse on the future of work should learn from a turn in philosophy that occurred in the 1980s, one that recognizes the good life towards which ethics strives can only be reached on a foundation of caring relationships (Gillian, 1982; Noddings, 1984). Care ethics recognizes that human well-being is a group project, one that involves...

An Ethical Framework for the Design, Development, Implementation, and Assessment of Drones Used in Public Healthcare

The use of drones in public healthcare is suggested as a means to improve efficiency under constrained resources and personnel. This paper begins by framing drones in healthcare as a social experiment where ethical guidelines are needed to protect those impacted while fully realizing the benefits the technology offers. Then we propose an...

Drones in humanitarian contexts, robot ethics, and the human–robot interaction

There are two dominant trends in the humanitarian care of 2019: the ‘technologizing of care’ and the centrality of the humanitarian principles. The concern, however, is that these two trends may conflict with one another. Faced with the growing use of drones in the humanitarian space there is need for ethical reflection to understand if this...

AI and the path to envelopment: knowledge as a first step towards the responsible regulation and use of AI-powered machines

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) entering our lives in novel ways—both known and unknown to us—there is both the enhancement of existing ethical issues associated with AI as well as the rise of new ethical issues. There is much focus on opening up the ‘black box’ of modern machine-learning algorithms to understand the reasoning behind their...

Killing by Autonomous Vehicles and the Legal Doctrine of Necessity

How should autonomous vehicles (aka self-driving cars) be programmed to behave in the event of an unavoidable accident in which the only choice open is one between causing different damages or losses to different objects or persons? This paper addresses this ethical question starting from the normative principles elaborated in the law to...

The Dawning of the Ethics of Environmental Robots

Environmental scientists and engineers have been exploring research and monitoring applications of robotics, as well as exploring ways of integrating robotics into ecosystems to aid in responses to accelerating environmental, climatic, and biodiversity changes. These emerging applications of robots and other autonomous technologies present...