Fuzzy ethics: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bot.

Heron, Michael James; Belford, Pauline

Abstract

The recent death of a Volkswagen worker at the hand of a factory robot has resulted in a number of editorials and opinion pieces discussing moral responsibility and robots. In this short response piece we outline some of the wider context of this discussion, with reference to the classic ethical study the Case of the Killer Robot. We argue that there is a growing need for the field of computer ethics to consider with some urgency what it means to be a responsible moral agent when tragic events occur, and to what extent it makes sense to 'blame the robot'.

Citation

HERON, M.J. and BELFORD, P. 2015. Fuzzy ethics: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bot. ACM SIGCAS computers and society [online], 45(4), pages 4-6. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/2856428.2856429

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 11, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Dec 11, 2015
• Publication Date: Dec 11, 2015
• Deposit Date: Nov 24, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 24, 2016
• Journal: ACM SIGCAS computers and society
• Print ISSN: 0095-2737
• Publisher: ACM Association for Computing Machinery
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 4-6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2856428.2856429
• Keywords: Ethics; Morality; Professional issues; Killer robot; Case of the killer robot; Volkswagen
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1980