A Prima Facie Duty Approach to Machine Ethics

Abstract

I n our early work on attempting to develop ethics for a machine , we first established that it is possible to create a program that can compute the ethically correct action when faced with a moral dilemma using a well-known ethical theory (Anderson et al. 2006). The theory we chose, Hedonistic Act Utilitarianism, was ideally suited to the task because its founder, Jeremy Bentham (1781), described it as a theory that involves performing “moral arithmetic.” Unfortunately, few contemporary ethicists are satisfied with this teleological ethical theory that bases the rightness and wrongness of actions entirely on the likely future consequences of those actions. It does not take into account justice considerations, such as rights and what people deserve in light of their past behavior; such considerations are the focus of deontological theories like Kant's Categorical Imperative, which have been accused of ignoring consequences. The ideal ethical theory, we believe, is one that combines elements of both approaches. The prima facie duty approach to ethical theory, advocated by W.D. Ross (1930), maintains that there isn't a single absolute duty to which we must adhere, as is the case with the two aforementioned theories, but rather a number of duties that we should try to follow (some teleological and others deontological), each of which could be overridden on occasion by one of the other duties.

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