Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors argue that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics.

About the Author
Colin Allen is a Professor of History & Philosophy of Science and of Cognitive Science at Indiana University. Wendell Wallach is a consultant and writer and is affiliated with Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Reviews
When machines go it alone, accountability disappears - and with it the rule of law. Which is why philosophers Wendall Wallach and Colin Allen are asking how we can persuade robots to do the right thing. The result, in their seminal...book Moral Machines, makes clear just how far we have to go. * Stephen Cave, Financial Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780195374049
Author Wendell Wallach
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 157mm * 236mm * 28mm