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Tuesday, March 06, 2018

How Can we Trust a Robot?

Thoughtful and interesting reviewed lengthy paper at the link.  Also a video presentation below.

How Can We Trust a Robot?  By Benjamin Kuipers 
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 61 No. 3, Pages 86-95
10.1145/3173087

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have raised concerns about the impact on our society of intelligent robots, unconstrained by morality or ethics.7,9 .... 

" ... Conclusion
Trust is essential for the successful functioning of society. Trust is necessary for cooperation, which produces the resources society needs. Morality, ethics, and other social norms encourage individuals to act in trustworthy ways, avoiding selfish decisions that exploit vulnerability, violate trust, and discourage cooperation. As we contemplate the design of robots (and other AIs) that perceive the world and select actions to pursue their goals in that world, we must design them to follow the social norms of our society. Doing this does not require them to be true moral agents, capable of genuinely taking responsibility for their actions.

Social norms vary by society, so robot behavior will vary by society as well, but this is outside the scope of this article.

The major theories of philosophical ethics provide clues toward the design of such AI agents, but a successful design must combine aspects of all theories. The physical and social environment is immensely complex. Even so, some moral decisions must be made quickly. But there must also be a slower deliberative evaluation process, to confirm or revise the rapidly responding rules and constraints. At longer time scales, there must be mechanisms for learning new concepts for virtues and vices, mediating between perceptions, goals, plans, and actions. The technical research challenges are how to accomplish all these goals.

Self-driving cars may well be the first widespread examples of trustworthy robots, designed to earn trust by demonstrating how well they follow social norms. The design focus for self-driving cars should not be on the Deadly Dilemma, but on how a robot's everyday behavior can demonstrate its trustworthiness. .... " 
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Figure. Watch the author discuss his work in this exclusive Communications video. https://cacm.acm.org/videos/how-can-we-trust-a-robot

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