Responsible Robotics and Responsibility Attribution

Abstract

Abstract This paper stresses the centrality of human responsibility as the necessary foundation for establishing clear robotics policies and regulations; responsibility not on the part of a robot’s hardware or software, but on the part of the humans behind the machines—those researching and developing robotics. Simply put, we need responsible robotics. Responsible robotics is a term that has recently ‘come into vogue’, yet an understanding of what responsible robotics means is still in development. In light of both the complexity of development (i.e. the many hands involved) and the newness of robot development (i.e. few regulatory boards established to ensure accountability), there is a need to establish procedures to assign future responsibilities among the actors involved in a robot’s development and implementation. The three alternative laws of responsible robotics by Murphy and Wood play a formidable contribution to the discussion; however, they repeat the difficulty that Asimov introduced, that is, laws in general, whether they are for the robot or for the roboticist, are incomplete when put into practice. The proposal here is to extend the three alternative laws of responsible robotics into a more robust framework for responsibility attribution as part of the responsible robotics goal. This framework requires making explicit various factors: the type of robot, the stage of robot development, the intended sector of use, and the manner of robot acquisition. With this in mind, one must carefully consider the scope of the ethical issue in question and determine the kind of responsibility attributed to said actor(s).

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