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Ethics in Social Autonomous Robots: Decision-Making, Transparency, and Trust

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Ethics in Social Autonomous Robots: Decision-Making, Transparency, and Trust Ethics in Social Autonomous Robots: Decision-Making, Transparency, and Trust Fahad Alaieri Thesis submitted to the University of Ottawa in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the PhD in Electronic Business Technologies Faculty of Engineering University of Ottawa © Fahad Alaieri, Ottawa, Canada, 2018 Abstract Autonomous decision-making machines – ranging from autonomous vehicles to chatbots – are already able to make decisions that have ethical consequences. If these machines are eventually deployed on a large scale, members of society will have to be able to trust the decisions that are made by these machines. For these machines to be trustworthy, their decisions must be overseen by socially accepted ethical principles; moreover, these principles and their role in machine decision-making must be transparent and explainable: it must be possible to explain why machine decisions are made and such explanations require that the mechanisms involved for making them are transparent. Furthermore, manufacturing companies have a corporate social responsibility to design such robots in ways that make them not only safe but also trustworthy. Members of society will not trust a robot that works in mysterious, ambiguous, or inexplicable ways, particularly if this robot is required to make decisions based on ethical principles. The current literature on embedding ethics in robots is sparse. This thesis aims to partially fill this gap in order to help different stakeholders (including policy makers, the robot industry, robots designers, and the general public) to understand the many dimensions of machine- executable ethics. To this end, I provide a framework for understanding the relationships among different stakeholders who legislate, create, deploy, and use robots and their reasons for requiring transparency and explanations. This framework aims to provide an account of the relationships between the transparency of the decision-making process in ethical robots, explanations for their behaviour, and the individual and social trust that results. ii This thesis also presents a model that decomposes the stages of ethical decision-making into their elementary components with a view to enabling stakeholders to allocate the responsibility for such choices. In addition, I propose a model for transparency which demonstrates the importance of and relationships between disclosure, transparency, and explanation which are needed for societies to accept and trust robots. One of the important stakeholders of robotics is the general public and, in addition to providing an analytical framework with which to conceptualize ethical decision-making, this thesis also performs an analysis of opinions drawn from hundreds of written comments posted on public forums concerning the behaviour of socially autonomous robots. This analysis provides insights into the layperson’s responses to machines that make decisions and offers support for policy recommendations that should be considered by regulators in the future. This thesis contributes to the area of ethics and governance of artificial intelligence. iii Acknowledgments Completion of this doctoral dissertation was possible with the support of several people. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of them. First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor André Vellino. It has been my honour to be his first Ph.D. student. Since I first began working on the thesis, Professor Vellino has offered valuable guidance, scholarly advice, and consistent encouragement throughout my research work. This this was possible only because of his unconditional support. I appreciate his contributions of time and ideas, the joy and enthusiasm he has for his research were contagious and motivational for me, especially during times of challenge in the pursuit of my Ph.D. Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee who have guided me through all these years, Professor Rocci Luppicini and Professor Umar Ruhi, for their insightful comments and encouragement, but also for the hard questions which incentivised me to widen my research from various perspectives. Nobody has been more important to me in the pursuit of this project than the members of my family. I owe a lot to my parents, who have encouraged and helped me at every stage of my personal and academic life, and who have longed to see this achievement come true. They are my ultimate role models. Most importantly, I wish to thank my loving and supportive wife, Asma Aljutaili, who has supported me in every possible way to see the completion of this work; and my two wonderful children, Saleh and Yaser, who have provided unending inspiration. iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables .................................................................................................................... viii 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Increasing Demand for Robots .............................................................................. 4 1.2. Research Questions ............................................................................................... 7 1.3. Research Objectives .............................................................................................. 8 1.4. Problem Statement ................................................................................................ 8 1.5. Motivations ........................................................................................................... 9 1.6. Why do we Need Robot Ethics? .......................................................................... 10 1.7. Thesis Outcomes (Contributions) ........................................................................ 14 1.8. Thesis Structure .................................................................................................. 15 2. Methodology .............................................................................................................. 17 2.1. Research Scope ................................................................................................... 17 2.2. Research Design ................................................................................................. 19 2.3. Research Process ................................................................................................. 22 2.4. Design Science Research Methodology ............................................................... 23 2.4.1. DSRM Process ............................................................................................ 24 2.5. Design Theory .................................................................................................... 25 2.6. Content Analysis Methodology ........................................................................... 27 3. Literature Review ....................................................................................................... 30 3.1. Robot Classifications .......................................................................................... 30 3.2. Robots and Artificial Intelligence ........................................................................ 31 3.2.1. What is a Robot? ......................................................................................... 32 3.2.2. Artificial Intelligence .................................................................................. 34 3.2.3. Artificial Moral Agents ............................................................................... 35 3.2.4. Human Robot Interaction ............................................................................ 36 3.2.5. What is Robot Ethics? ................................................................................. 38 3.3. The Characteristics of Ethical Robots .................................................................. 41 3.4. Trolley Problem .................................................................................................. 45 3.5. Ethical Laws and Theories .................................................................................. 46 3.5.1. Value Sensitive Design ................................................................................ 52 3.5.2. Understanding as a Characteristic ................................................................ 54 3.6. Artificial Moral Agents and Moral Responsibility ............................................... 55 3.6.1. Moral Responsibility ................................................................................... 57 3.6.2. Discussion of Moral Responsibility in Machines ......................................... 58 3.6.3. Who is Responsible? ................................................................................... 66 3.7. Autonomous Vehicles ......................................................................................... 68 3.7.1. Autonomous Vehicles’ Levels of Autonomy ..............................................
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