New Foundations of Ethical Multiagent Systems

Conference paper (2020)

Authors

P.K. Murukannaiah Interactive Intelligence - EEMCS
Nirav Ajmeri University of North Carolina
C.M. Jonker Interactive Intelligence - EEMCS
Munindar P. Singh University of North Carolina
Research Group
Interactive Intelligence (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2020 P.K. Murukannaiah, Nirav Ajmeri, C.M. Jonker, Munindar P. Singh
Ethics Values Sociotechnical systems
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

2020

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Intelligent Systems

Research Group

Interactive Intelligence

Abstract

Ethics is inherently a multiagent concern. However, research on AI ethics today is dominated by work on individual agents: (1) how an autonomous robot or car may harm or (differentially) benefit people in hypothetical situations (the so-called trolley problems) and (2) how a machine learning algorithm may produce biased decisions or recommendations. The societal framework is largely omitted. To develop new foundations for ethics in AI, we adopt a sociotechnical stance in which agents (as technical entities) help autonomous social entities or principals (people and organizations). This multiagent conception of a sociotechnical system (STS) captures how ethical concerns arise in the mutual interactions of multiple stakeholders. These foundations would enable us to realize ethical STSs that incorporate social and technical controls to respect stated ethical postures of the agents in the STSs. The envisioned foundations require new thinking, along two broad themes, on how to realize (1) an STS that reflects its stakeholders’ values and (2) individual agents that function effectively in such an STS.