Robot ethics
Researchers from diverse areas are beginning to tackle ethical questions about creating robotic technology and implementing it in societies, in a way that will still ensure the safety of the human race.
In discussions with students and non specialists, Gianmarco Veruggio and Fiorella Operto thought that it was necessary to spread correct conceptions among the general public about the alleged dangers in Robotics.
They thought that a productive debate based on accurate insights and real knowledge could push people to take an active part in the education of public opinion, make them comprehend the positive uses of the new technology, and prevent its abuse.
Further events in the field are announced by the euRobotics ELS topics group, and by RoboHub: Computer scientist Virginia Dignum noted in a March 2018 issue of Ethics and Information Technology that the general societal attitude toward artificial intelligence (AI) has, in the modern era, shifted away from viewing AI as a tool and toward viewing it as an intelligent “team-mate”.
In the same article, she assessed that, with respect to AI, ethical thinkers have three goals, each of which she argues can be achieved in the modern era with careful thought and implementation.
One film that could be argued to be ingrained in pop culture that depicts the dystopian future use of robotic AI is The Matrix, depicting a future where humans and conscious sentient AI struggle for control of planet earth resulting in the destruction of most of the human race.
An animated film based on The Matrix, the Animatrix, focused heavily on the potential ethical issues and insecurities between humans and robots.
Another facet of roboethics is specifically concerned with the treatment of robots by humans, and has been explored in numerous films and television shows.
[20] More recently, the movie Ex Machina and TV show Westworld have taken on these ethical questions quite directly by depicting hyper-realistic robots that humans treat as inconsequential commodities.
Another famous pop culture case of robots or AI without programmed ethics or morals is HAL 9000 in the Space Odyssey series, where HAL (a computer with advanced AI capabilities who monitors and assists humans on a space station) kills all the humans on board to ensure the success of the assigned mission after his own life is threatened.
[24] Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) which is often called “killer robots,” are theoretically able to target and fire without human supervision and interference.
With diverse predictions, certain states believe LAWS will be unable to meet this criterion, while others underline the difficulty of adjudicating at this stage without knowing the weapons' future capabilities (Japan, Australia).
All insist equally on the ex-ante verification of the systems' conformity to IHL before they are put into service, in virtue of article of the first additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions.
[29] With contemporary technological issues emerging as society pushes on, one topic that requires thorough thought is robot ethics concerning the law.
