Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence, by Patrick Lin, Keith Abney and Ryan Jenkins (eds)

摘要

‘Happy are those ages when the starry sky is the map of all possible paths—ages whose paths are illuminated by the light of the stars. Everything in such ages is new and yet familiar, full of adventure and yet their own.’1 ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’2 Robots have moved from the niche enclaves of science fiction and research laboratories into everyday life. How we address the transformative and at times, disruptive impact of innovations such as drones, driverless cars, assistive technologies and social robots rightly deserves close and careful scrutiny. As robotic technologies gradually become embedded into society, there has been a noticeable rise in debates about the ethics of emerging technologies, their potential and even concerns about the increasing mechanization of our lives and existential risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI). The collection of essays in Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence aims to examine the ethical values embedded in a range of emerging technologies and identifies areas where particular care is warranted in respect of engineering and development decisions that may impair or undermine fundamental ethical norms in light of actual or perceived lack of legal standards and rules. Robot Ethics 2.0 provides an appropriate resource for study and reflection on a range of philosophical issues that in a number of respects can be traced back to those encountered, for example, during the enlightenment when the essence of human life and consciousness were debated and which continue to be sharply felt now as serious issues about sentience, consciousness and intelligence have had a renaissance in the age of Big Data and AI. At the core of these debates is the coming together of hardware and software and which forms the subject matter of the collection.