The Ethics of Human–Robot Interaction and Traditional Moral Theories

Abstract

The rapid introduction of different kinds of robots and other machines with artificial intelligence into different domains of life raises the question of whether robots can be moral agents and moral patients. In other words, can robots perform moral actions? Can robots be on the receiving end of moral actions? To explore these questions, this chapter relates the new area of the ethics of human–robot interaction to traditional ethical theories such as utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and virtue ethics. These theories were developed with the assumption that the paradigmatic examples of moral agents and moral patients are human beings. As this chapter argues, this creates challenges for anybody who wishes to extend the traditional ethical theories to new questions of whether robots can be moral agents and/or moral patients.