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About

Linda Johansson is a leading voice in the ethics of emerging technologies, with a primary focus on the moral status of robots and the ethical deployment of autonomous systems in both warfare and civil society. Her work bridges the gap between abstract moral philosophy and concrete engineering challenges. In her highly cited paper, “Is It Morally Right to Use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in War?” (28 citations), she confronts the pressing ethical dilemmas of modern combat. Her seminal work, “The Functional Morality of Robots” (23 citations), proposes a provocative framework: that we should judge a robot’s moral responsibility by its observable behavior, using the same criteria we apply to humans. This functionalist approach challenges traditional notions of agency. Johansson further explores the intersection of ethics and design, investigating co-evolutionary scenarios for creative prototyping of future robot systems for civil protection, and applying the Ethics of Care to the development of care robots. Her 2013 doctoral thesis, *Autonomous Systems in Society and War: Philosophical Inquiries*, synthesizes these themes, establishing her as a critical thinker shaping how we build and govern our autonomous future.