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Articles

Can Robots Be Ethical?

No, says Robert Newman.

Should the driverless vehicles being developed by Apple, Google and Daimler be programmed to mount the pavement to avoid a head-on collision? Should they be programmed to swerve to hit one person in order to avoid hitting two? Two instead of four? Four instead of a lorry full of hazardous chemicals? Driverless cars programmed to select between these options would be one example of what the science journal Nature has taken to calling ‘ethical robots’. Another is the next generation of weapons. If drones weren’t bad enough, the US Defence Department is developing Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). These select their own kill list using a set of algorithms, and need no human intervention, at however remote a distance. Autonomous drones in development include tiny rotorcraft smaller than a table-tennis ball, which will be able to float through homes, shops and offices to deliver a puncture to the cranium.

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