Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics is proposed as an emerging and interdisciplinary field concerned with addressing the ethical issues of AI, such as the issue of moral decision-making. The conflict between our intuitive moral judgments constitutes an inevitable obstacle to decision-making in AI ethics. This article outlines the Moral Relevance Approach, which could provide a considerable moral foundation for AI ethics. Taking moral relevance as the precondition of the consequentialist principles, the Moral Relevance Approach aims to plausibly consider individual moral claims. (...) It is not only the common ethical target shaping our moral consensus but also the inherent moral ability connecting others with us. (shrink)

In a stimulating recent article for this journal (van Wynsberghe and Robbins in Sci Eng Ethics 25(3):719–735, 2019), Aimee van Wynsberghe and Scott Robbins mount a serious critique of a number of reasons advanced in favor of building artificial moral agents (AMAs). In light of their critique, vW&R make two recommendations: they advocate a moratorium on the commercialization of AMAs and suggest that the argumentative burden is now shifted onto the proponents of AMAs to come up with new reasons for (...) building them. This commentary aims to explore the implications vW&R draw from their critique. In particular, it will raise objections to the moratorium argument and propose a presumptive case for commercializing AMAs. (shrink)

The thesis investigates the implications for moral philosophy of research in psychology. In addition to an introduction and concluding remarks, the thesis consists of four chapters, each exploring various more specific challenges or inputs to moral philosophy from cognitive, social, personality, developmental, and evolutionary psychology. Chapter 1 explores and clarifies the issue of whether or not morality is innate. The chapter’s general conclusion is that evolution has equipped us with a basic suite of emotions that shape our moral judgments in (...) important ways. Chapter 2 presents and investigates the challenge presented to deontological ethics by Joshua Greene’s so-called dual process theory. The chapter partly agrees with his conclusion that the dual process view neutralizes some common criticisms against utilitarianism founded on deontological intuitions, but also points to avenues left to explore for deontologists. Chapter 3 focuses on Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer’s suggestion that utilitarianism is less vulnerable to so-called evolutionary debunking than other moral theories. The chapter is by and large critical of their attempt. In the final chapter 4, attention is directed at the issue of whether or not social psychology has shown that people lack stable character traits, and hence that the virtue ethical view is premised on false or tenuous assumptions. Though this so-called situationist challenge at one time seemed like a serious threat to virtue ethics, the chapter argues for a moderate position, pointing to the fragility of much of the empirical research invoked to substantiate this challenge while also suggesting revisions to the virtue-ethical view as such. (shrink)

In 2021, Germany passed the first law worldwide that regulates dilemma situations with autonomous cars. Against this background, this article investigates the permissibility of trade-offs between human lives in the context of self-driving cars. It does so by drawing on the debate about the traditional trolley problem. In contrast to most authors in the relevant literature, it argues that the debate about the trolley problem is both directly and indirectly relevant for the ethics of crashes with self-driving cars. Drawing on (...) its direct normative relevance, the article shows that trade-offs are permissible in situations with self-driving cars that are similar to paradigmatic trolley cases. In scenarios that are unlike paradigmatic trolley cases, the debate about the trolley problem can have indirect normative relevance because it provides reasons against the use of moral theories and principles that cannot account for the trolley problem. (shrink)

In 2017, the German ethics commission for automated and connected driving released 20 ethical guidelines for autonomous vehicles. It is now up to the research and industrial sectors to enhance the development of autonomous vehicles based on such guidelines. In the current state of the art, we find studies on how ethical theories can be integrated. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no framework for motion planning has yet been published which allows for the true implementation of any practical (...) ethical policies. This paper makes four contributions: Firstly, we briefly present the state of the art based on recent works concerning unavoidable accidents of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and identify further need for research. While most of the research focuses on decision strategies in moral dilemmas or crash optimization, we aim to develop an ethical trajectory planning for all situations on public roads. Secondly, we discuss several ethical theories and argue for the adoption of the theory “ethics of risk.” Thirdly, we propose a new framework for trajectory planning, with uncertainties and an assessment of risks. In this framework, we transform ethical specifications into mathematical equations and thus create the basis for the programming of an ethical trajectory. We present a risk cost function for trajectory planning that considers minimization of the overall risk, priority for the worst-off and equal treatment of people. Finally, we build a connection between the widely discussed trolley problem and our proposed framework. (shrink)