Ethics of Robotics

This book is dedicated to expert research topics, and analyses of ethics-related inquiry, at the machine ethics and morality level: key players, benefits, problems, policies, and strategies. Gathering some of the leading voices that recognize and understand the complexities and intricacies of human-machine ethics early on in this phenomenon provides a resourceful compendium to be accessed by decision-makers and theorists concerned with identification and adoption of human-machine ethics initiatives, leading to needed policy adoption and reform for human-machine entities, their technologies, and their societal and legal obligations. The book encompasses theory and practice sections for each topical component of important areas of human-machine ethics both in existence today, and prospective for the future. Yet, human-machine ethics is not a futuristic matter; it is ever-present, here and now – thanks largely to ongoing technological advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology, among other allied fields.

The discussion about robots in elderly care is populated by doom scenarios about a totally dehumanized care system in which elderly people are taken care of by machines. Such scenarios are helpful as they attend us to what we think is important with regard to the quality elderly care. However, this article argues that they are misleading in so far as they (1) assume that deception in care is always morally unacceptable, (2) suggest that robots and other information technologies necessarily deceive elderly people by creating a “virtual” world as opposed to a “real” world, (3) assume that elderly people of the future have similar ICT skills and interests as the elderly people of today, and (4) assume a simplistic view of technologies. The article suggests an approach to evaluating care robots and ICT in health care which acknowledges and addresses a number of ethical problems raised by robotic care—for instance disengagement problems—while taking into account that some elderly people may need care that does not treat them as (empirically) autonomous, that many the elderly of the future are likely to be digital natives, and that the task of evaluating technologies in care is more complicated than the discussion of deception suggests.

Many recent studies (e.g., IFR: International Federation of Robotics, 2016) predict that the number of robots (industrial, service/social, intelligent/autonomous) will increase enormously in the future. Robots are directly involved in human life. Industrial robots, household robots, medical robots, assistive robots, sociable/entertainment robots, and war robots all play important roles in human life and raise crucial ethical problems for our society. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the fundamental concepts of robot ethics (roboethics) and some future prospects of robots and roboethics, as an introduction to the present Special Issue of the journal Information on " Roboethics ". We start with the question of what roboethics is, as well as a discussion of the methodologies of roboethics, including a brief look at the branches and theories of ethics in general. Then, we outline the major branches of roboethics, namely: medical roboethics, assistive roboethics, sociorobot ethics, war roboethics, autonomous car ethics, and cyborg ethics. Finally, we present the prospects for the future of robotics and roboethics.

The task of this essay is to respond to the question concerning robots and responsibility—to answer for the way that we understand, debate, and decide who or what is able to answer for decisions and actions undertaken by increasingly interactive, autonomous, and sociable mechanisms. The analysis proceeds through three steps or movements. 1) It begins by critically examining the instrumental theory of technology, which determines the way one typically deals with and responds to the question of responsibility when it involves technology. 2) It then considers three instances where recent innovations in robotics challenge this standard operating procedure by opening gaps in the usual way of assigning responsibility. The innovations considered in this section include: autonomous technology, machine learning, and social robots. 3) The essay concludes by evaluating the three different responses—instrumentalism 2.0, machine ethics, and hybrid responsibility—that have been made in face of these difficulties in an effort to map out the opportunities and challenges of and for responsible robotics.

This essay addresses the other side of the robot ethics debate, taking up and investigating the question “Can and should robots have rights?” The examination of this subject proceeds by way of three steps or movements. We begin by looking at and analyzing the form of the question itself. There is an important philosophical difference between the two modal verbs that organize the inquiry—can and should. This difference has considerable history behind it that influences what is asked about and how. Second, capitalizing on this verbal distinction, it is possible to identify four modalities concerning social robots and the question of rights. The second section will identify and critically assess these four modalities as they have been deployed and developed in the current literature. Finally, we will conclude by proposing another alternative, a way of thinking otherwise that effectively challenges the existing rules of the game and provides for other ways of theorizing moral standing that can scale to the unique challenges and opportunities that are confronted in the face of social robots.

Amongst the many fields of law affected by genetics and robotics there is also crime prevention.
Genetics may be used in crime prevention basically in two ways: 1) to establish whether a person is genetically predisposed to crime or antisocial behaviours (that is, to assess his dangerousness); 2) to collect and retain DNA samples of individuals in special databases or banks in order to compare them with those found on the scenes of crimes, so to detect the authors of crimes. As for robotics, its employment in crime prevention is far more variegated than that of genetics, but it often passes unnoticed to the eyes of the lawyer, as it is still relegated to the field of mere praxis, lacking specific legal regulations. Robots are currently used by many Countries for the most disparate preventive purposes, such as a) surveillance, b) formation, education and information, c) police guarding and patrolling, d) using force against things and against persons.
The analysis of these possible uses of genetics and robotics in crime prevention shows how they may be employed as means of either positive or negative prevention, whereas positive prevention consists in the promotion and development of the prerogatives and personality of human person, while negative prevention consists in the compression of human personality, with its inherent rights and liberties.
Thus, genetics and robotics reflect once again the old question of the means of crime prevention. Against the insistent (almost obsessive) suggestions that the only way to «fight» a criminality that (especially in our global era) is getting more and more «exceptional» are negative measures, I insist in suggesting that positive measures are still the most efficient and legitimate way to prevent crime. The resources, technologies and products of globalisation – amongst which robotics and genetics – would be better invested in the development of instruments to support and enhance the personality of the human being, rather than in the multiplication of weapons and measures that compress, incapacitate, neutralise, eliminate this personality in an escalation of violence and (preventive) repression which ultimately is more criminogenic than preventive – especially on the global scale and over the long term.
However, since crime prevention is but a means of protection against the most harmful aggression to the most significant interests and goods of the human person, then the condition for its legitimacy is that crime prevention itself does not turn into result into an arbitrary violation of the human person itself. Therefore, the minimum threshold of legitimacy of any genetic and robotic measure of crime prevention shall be its compliance with the safeguard of fundamental individual rights and liberties typical the rule of law and protected by international human rights law.

Vi è una spinta convergente all’autonomia operativa per mezzi militari terrestri, navali ed aerei che arriva a comprendere i compiti di riconoscimento e d’ingaggio di bersagli nemici. Per i compiti specifici da svolgere in autonomia, tali dispositivi godrebbero di autonomia operativa in quanto armi in grado di sopprimere un essere umano senza la previa autorizzazione di un altro essere umano. Si tratta di uno sviluppo tecnologicamente possibile che non ha precedenti in tutta la storia dei conflitti armati. Possiamo dare a una macchina la possibilità di uccidere un essere umano senza l’autorizzazione di un altro essere umano? Dobbiamo fermare lo sviluppo delle armi autonome? Ecco le domande principali che saranno analizzate e discusse in questo contributo. Lo sfondo teorico utilizzato per fornire una risposta a tali domande è quello delle teorie etiche normative, nella varietà delle teorie deontologiche e in quella delle teorie consequenzialiste. Una valutazione condotta congiuntamente nella cornice dell’etica deontologica e in quella dell’etica delle conseguenze offre una solida convergenza di argomenti per mettere al bando armi che prendono decisioni di vita o di morte e conducono autonomamente attacchi letali contro un essere umano.

There are many issues surrounding the introduction of social robots into society, including concerns about how they may be used to replace true social interaction in personal life, dehumanise formerly social occupations such as elderly care, and be perceived as more human than they actually are. This paper shall present a psychological perspective on the human reception of social robots and apply the gathered information to address these concerns.

Wie sollen sich autonome Fahrzeuge verhalten, wenn ein Unfall nicht mehr abwendbar ist? Die Komplexität spezifischer moralischer Dilemmata, die in diesem Kontext auftreten können, lässt bewährte ethische Denktraditionen an ihre Grenzen stoßen. Dieser Aufsatz versteht sich als Versuch, neue Lösungsperspektiven mithilfe einer risikoethischen Sichtweise auf die Problematik zu eröffnen und auf diese Weise deren Relevanz für die Programmierung von ethischen Unfallalgorithmen aufzuzeigen. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Frage, welche Implikationen sich aus einer Auffassung von Dilemma-Situationen als risikoethische Verteilungsprobleme im Hinblick auf die Zulässigkeit von entsprechenden Risikoübertragungen ergeben. Dabei wird zunächst eine risikoethische Interpretation des zugrundeliegenden Entscheidungsproblems skizziert, welches durch seine dilemmatische Struktur eine besondere Risikokonstellation begründet. Ausgehend von den Positionen von Sven Ove Hansson und Julian Nida-Rümelin wird für einen deontologisch-risikoethischen Ansatz argumentiert, der auf Individualrechten einerseits und einer interpersonell gerechten Verteilung der entstehenden Schadensrisiken anderseits basiert. Diese beiden Kriterien werden für den Anwendungskontext des autonomen Fahrens konkretisiert. Zum einen wird in Bezug auf das erste Kriterium argumentiert, dass individuelle Rechte genau dann als angemessen gewahrt gelten können, wenn die resultierenden Risikoübertragungen auf die Einzelnen in ihrer absoluten Höhe jeweils zumutbar sind (absolutes Prinzip). Zum anderen werden Schwierigkeiten skizziert, die sich hinsichtlich der konkreten Umsetzung des zweiten Kriteriums der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit (relatives Prinzip) ergeben. In diesem Zusammenhang werden beispielsweise ethische Herausforderungen in Bezug auf einen möglichen Vorteilsausgleich, das Prinzip der Schadensminimierung sowie individuell unterschiedliche Ausgangsbedingungen der persönlichen Schadensreduktion kritisch in den Blick genommen.

(English version:)
How should self-driving cars react in cases of unavoidable collisions? The complexity of specific dilemma situations that might arise in the context of autonomous driving pushes well-established ethical traditions of thought to their limits. This paper attempts to open up new opportunities for approaching this issue. By reframing the underlying decision problem from the perspective of ethics of risk, it is argued that the latter is highly relevant for the programming of ethical crash algorithms. The paper’s main contribution lies in providing an interpretation of dilemma situations as ethical problems of risk distribution as well as an outline of the resulting implications in terms of the permissibility of imposing these risks. Initially, moral dilemmas are shown to constitute a particularly challenging risk constellation. Drawing upon the positions of Sven Ove Hansson and Julian Nida-Rümelin, the paper makes the case for a deontological approach based on individual rights on the one hand and a fair distribution of the resulting risks of damage on the other hand. These two criteria are applied to and further elaborated in the context of self-driving car dilemmas. With regard to the first criterion, it is argued that individual rights could be considered to be adequately safeguarded if, and only if, the resulting levels of risk imposition on the individual are acceptable (absolute principle). Besides, some difficulties that emerge in the context of the second criterion of distributive justice (relative principle) are outlined. At this point, various ethical challenges such as the compensation of potential benefits, the principle of harm minimisation, and fundamental differences in individuals’ possibilities of reducing personal harm are critically examined.

Science fiction narratives have not only influenced the way the majority of people imagine the future, but they have also shaped the general expectations for the technological development. This phenomenon has been called "science fiction prototyping" by Brian David Johnson. The prototype of a robot is created by science fiction works. Robots as artificially created entities are often presented as potential "members" of future society. Therefore, their legal status in imaginary reality is worth considering. The analysis of Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott and I, Robot (2004) by Alex Proyas juxtaposes features that, according to the legal tradition, are most often attributed to moral subjects of legal protection with human-like features of robots. The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this study involves applying legal reasoning to the study of science fiction.

Responding to long-standing warnings that robots and AI will enslave humans, I argue that the main problem we face is not that automation might turn us into slaves but, rather, that we remain masters. First I construct an argument concerning what I call ‘the tragedy of the master’: using the master–slave dialectic, I argue that automation technologies threaten to make us vulnerable, alienated, and automated masters. I elaborate the implications for power, knowledge, and experience. Then I critically discuss and question this argument but also the very thinking in terms of masters and slaves, which fuels both arguments. I question the discourse about slavery and object to the assumptions made about human–technology relations. However, I also show that the discussion about masters and slaves attends us to issues with human–human relations, in particular to the social consequences of automation such as power issues and the problem of the relation between automation and (un)employment. Finally, I reflect on how we can respond to our predicament, to ‘the tragedy of the master’.

Two major strategies (the top-down and bottom-up strategies) are currently discussed in robot ethics for moral integration. I will argue that both strategies are not sufficient. Instead, I agree with Bertram F. Malle and Matthias Scheutz that robots need to be equipped with moral competence if we don’t want them to be a potential risk in society, causing harm, social problems or conflicts. However, I claim that we should not define moral competence merely as a result of different “elements” or “components” we can randomly change. My suggestion is to follow Georg Lind’s dual aspect dual layer theory of moral self that provides a broader perspective and another vocabulary for the discussion in robot ethics. According to Lind, moral competence is only one aspect of moral behavior that we cannot separate from its second aspect: moral orientation. As a result, the thesis of this paper is that integrating morality into robots has to include moral orientation and moral competence.

While physical interaction with robots is becoming common in many domains, numerous devices are not appropriated by their
users and remain unused in the cupboard. This phenomenon is particularly observed with robotic devices which interact closely
with the body, especially if they are designed to compensate for a loss of sensory or motor capacity. This article uses the quite
extreme example of prosthetics to highlight the socio-anthropological and cultural phenomena affecting the appropriation and use
of technical objects which interact with the body as much as (or even more than) their technical performance. Considering these
complementary points of views and theories in the design of such devices could be a way of improving their appropriation.

An elderly patient in a care home only wants human nurses to provide her care-not robots. If she selected her carers based on skin colour, it would be seen as racist and morally objectionable, but is choosing a human nurse instead of a robot also morally objectionable and speciesist? A plausible response is that it is not, because humans provide a better standard of care than robots do, making such a choice justifiable. In this paper, I show why this response is incorrect, because robots can theoretically care as well as human nurses can. I differentiate between practical caring and emotional caring, and I argue that robots can match the standard of practical care given by human nurses, and they can simulate emotional care. There is growing evidence that people respond positively to robotic creatures and carebots, and AI software is apt to emotionally support patients in spite of the machine's own lack of emotions. I make the case that the appearance of emotional care is sufficient, and need not be linked to emotional states within the robot. After all, human nurses undoubtedly 'fake' emotional care and compassion sometimes, yet their patients still feel adequately cared for. I show that it is a mistake to claim that 'the human touch' is in itself a contributor to a higher standard of care; 'the robotic touch' will suffice. Nevertheless, it is not speciesist to favour human nurses over carebots, because carebots do not (currently) suffer as the result of such a choice. The Robotic Touch 89 In the residential care home where Maude lives, there are some human nurses and some carebots. Maude only wants human nurses to provide her care. IF MAUDE ONLY WANTED white nurses to provide her care purely on the basis of their skin colour, we would claim she was being racist-so when she chooses a human nurse over a carebot purely on the basis of species membership 1 , why do we not claim she is being speciesist? Two plausible responses are: 1. Humans provide a better standard of care than robots do (making the choice of a human nurse over a carebot justifiable). 2. Robots do not have moral standing because they cannot suffer, and therefore there is nothing morally problematic about choosing a human over a robot. 2 I address the first of these responses and demonstrate that it is unfounded, because some robots are capable of providing a standard of care which is equal to or higher than that provided by human nurses. I further show that it is a mistake to claim that 'the human touch' is valuable simply because it comes from a human being.

Resource Person: Dimitrios A.Karras

Dimitrios A. Karras received his Diploma and M.Sc. Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece in 1985 and the Ph. Degree in Electrical Engineering, from the NTUA, Greece in 1995, with honours. From 1990 and up to 2004 he collaborated as visiting professor and researcher with several universities and research institutes in Greece. Since 2004 he has been with the Sterea Hellas Institute of Technology, Automation Dept., Greece as associate professor in Digital Systems and Signal Processing, till 12/2018, as well as with the Hellenic Open University, Dept. Informatics as a visiting professor in Communication Systems (the latter since 2002 and up to 2010). Since 1/2019 is Associate Prof. in Digital Systems and Intelligent Systems, Signal Processing , in National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, School of Science, Dept. General. He is, also, adjunct professor with GLA University. Mathura, India and BIHER, BHARATH univ. India as well as with EPOKA and CIT universities Tirana. Moreover, he is with AICO EDV-Beratung GmbH as senior researcher as well as Director of Research and Documentation at ADIafrica N. G. O. He has published more than 70 research refereed journal papers in various areas of pattern recognition, image/signal processing and neural networks as well as in bioinformatics and more than 185 research papers in International refereed scientific Conferences. His research interests span the fields of pattern recognition and neural networks, image and signal processing, image and signal systems, biomedical systems, communications, networking and security. He has served as program committee member in many international conferences, as well as program chair and general chair in several international workshops and conferences in the fields of signal, image, communication and automation systems. He is, also, former editor in chief (2008-2016) of the International Journal in Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering (IJSISE), academic editor in the TWSJ, ISRN Communications and the Applied Mathematics Hindawi journals as well as associate editor in various scientific journals. He has been cited in more than 2469 research papers (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IxQurTMAAAAJ&hl=en), his H/G-indices are 20/50 (Google Scholar) and his Erdos number is 5. His RG score is 31.66

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another (in this case, artificial) agency.

Can robots perform actions, make decisions, collaborate with humans, be our friends, perhaps fall in love, or potentially harm us? Even before these things truly happen, ethical and philosophical questions already arise. The reason is that we humans have a tendency to spontaneously attribute minds and “agency” to anything even remotely humanlike. Moreover, some people already say that robots should be our companions and have rights. Others say that robots should be slaves. This book tackles emerging ethical issues about human beings, robots, and agency head on. It explores the ethics of creating robots that are, or appear to be, decision-making agents. From military robots to self-driving cars to care robots or even sex robots equipped with artificial intelligence: how should we interpret the apparent agency of such robots? This book argues that we need to explore how human beings can best coordinate and collaborate with robots in responsible ways. It investigates ethically important differences between human agency and robot agency to work towards an ethics of responsible human-robot interaction.

The following contribution examines the influence of mangas and animes on the social perception and cultural understanding of robots in Japan. Part of it is the narrow interaction between pop culture and Japanese robotics: Some examples shall serve to illustrate spill-over effects between popular robot stories and the recent development of robot technologies in Japan. The example of the famous Astro boy comics will be used to help investigate the ethical conflicts between humans and robots thematised in Japanese mangas. With a view to ethical problems the stories shall be subsumed under different categorical aspects.

How can we best identify, understand, and deal with ethical and societal issues raised by healthcare robotics? This paper argues that next to ethical analysis, classic technology assessment, and philosophical speculation we need forms of reflection, dialogue, and experiment that come, quite literally, much closer to innovation practices and contexts of use. The authors discuss a number of ways how to achieve that. Informed by their experience with “embedded” ethics in technical projects and with various tools and methods of responsible research and innovation, the paper identifies “internal” and “external” forms of dialogical research and innovation, reflections on the possibilities and limitations of these forms of ethical–technological innovation, and explores a number of ways how they can be supported by policy at national and supranational level.

Artykuł podejmuje próbę analizy serialu Westworld (HBO, 2016) w kluczu posthumanizmu oraz biopolityki dla omówienia zaprezentowanych w nim mechanizmów zarządzania życiem mechanicznych gospodarzy zamieszkujących futurystyczny park rozrywki. Autor podejmuje w tekście problemy sygnalizowane w serialu telewizyjnym, między innymi prawa człowieka, relacja twórca – dzieło, motyw golema czy zdobywanie samoświadomości przez wysoce zaawansowane androidy. Immersyjna symulacja miasteczka na Dzikim Zachodzie przyjmuje formę gry wyzwalającej w graczach różnorodne emocje i postawy wpływające na ich relacje z robotami, których interpretację wspomagają narzędzia groznawcze. Analizowana produkcja stanowi także interesujący przykład realizacji figury postczłowieka w popkulturze.

In the field of Law & Technology, scholars investigate the legal and regulatory consequences of the advent of new technologies, for example with respect to ICTs, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, or neurotechnologies. It is important to investigate whether technological developments in these fields require adjustments in existing legal frameworks, and whether technological developments themselves need to be regulated. Moreover, in Law & Technology scholars also investigate the ways in which technological artefacts can be used to regulate. This is called ʻtechno-regulationʼ.
This paper has two goals. First, I will analyse the concept of techno-regulation and propose that it needs to be broadened. Techno-regulation focuses on the intentional influencing of human behaviour through the implementation of values, norms and rules into technological artefacts. However, extensive research in various disciplines has revealed that the design (shape, form, functionality) of technological artefacts greatly affects usersʼ tacit and implicit responses to these artefacts. Since this has direct relevance to the theme of regulation, I propose to widen the reach of techno-regulation by speaking of ʻtechno-elicitationʼ instead.
In the second part of this paper, I focus my discussion of techno-regulation and techno- elicitation on the design of robots, which is relatively uncharted territory in the field of Law & Technology.

This article provides a short report on a recent interdisciplinary Dagstuhl Seminar on "Engineering Moral Agents". Imbuing robots and autonomous systems with ethical norms and values is an increasingly urgent challenge, given rapid developments in, for example, driverless cars, unmanned air vehicles (drones), and care assistant robots. Seminar participants discussed two immediate problems. A challenge for philosophical research is the formalisation of ethics in a format that lends itself to machine implementation; a challenge for computer science and robotics is the actual implementation of moral reasoning and conduct in autonomous systems. This article reports on these two challenges.

Proportionality and discrimination requirements for just and fair conduct of war have been the major focus of ethical, legal, and social (ELS) analyses of robotic weapons. We examine here less explored ELS issues concerning decision-making processes about present and prospective uses of robotic weapons. First, we analyze changes in the distribution of jus ad bellum powers that are potentially induced by robotic weapons on the basis of interpretations of the the US War Powers Resolution on the occasion of the 2011 US military operations in Libya. Second, we analyze public discussion and democratic decision-making about prospective uses of robotic weapons in the agnotogenetic context, thay is, in the context of mechanisms generating ignorance about robotic weapons. More specifically, on the basis of two-process models of scientific inquiry, we introduce and discuss what we call here research framework agnotogenesis. Scientists make public statements about their current research frameworks in general, and about long-term goals or merely regulative goals of their research activities in particular. These statements may contribute, and often inadvertently so, to generate disproportionate technological expectations, which are amplified at the hands of both media reporting and individual psychological responses. Examples of research framework agnotogenesis are discussed here in connection with technological expectations concerning the military skills or the moral competence of future robotic soldiers.

The purpose of Machine Ethics is to develop autonomous technologies that are able to manage not just the technical aspects of a tasks, but also the ethical ones. As a consequence, the notion of Artificial Moral Agent (AMA) has become a fundamental element of the discussion. Its meaning, however, remains rather unclear. Depending on the author or the context, the same expression stands for essentially different concepts. This casts a suspicious light on the philosophical significance of Machine Ethics. In particular, the risk arises of discarding Machine Ethics as a whole on the basis of accusations that, however, apply exclusively to one specific understanding of what AMAs are-but not to other, more adequate and convincing conceptualisations. To avoid this pitfall, this essay tries to elaborate a philosophically sound interpretation of AMAs and to sketch its primary component, i.e., the notion of functional ethics.

How should Autonomous Vehicles (aka self-driving cars) be programmed to behave in the event of an unavoidable accident in which the only choice open is one between causing different damages or losses to different objects or persons? This paper addresses this ethical question starting from the normative principles elaborated in the law to regulate difficult choices in other emergency scenarios. In particular, the paper offers a rational reconstruction of some major principles and norms embedded in the Anglo-American jurisprudence and case law on the “doctrine of necessity”; and assesses which, if any, of these principles and norms can be utilized to find reasonable guidelines for solving the ethical issue of the regulation of the programming of autonomous vehicles in emergency situations. The paper covers the following topics: the distinction between “justification” and “excuse”, the legal prohibition of intentional killing outside self-defence, the incommensurability of goods, and the legal constrains to the use of lethal force set by normative positions: obligations, responsibility, rights, and authority. For each of these principles and constrains the possible application to the programming of AVs is discussed. Based on the analysis, some practical suggestions are offered.

Ethical reflection on drone fighting suggests
that this practice does not only create physical distance, but
also moral distance: far removed from one’s opponent, it
becomes easier to kill. This paper discusses this thesis,
frames it as a moral-epistemological problem, and explores
the role of information technology in bridging and creating
distance. Inspired by a broad range of conceptual and
empirical resources including ethics of robotics, psychol-
ogy, phenomenology, and media reports, it is first argued
that drone fighting, like other long-range fighting, creates
epistemic and moral distance in so far as ‘screenfighting’
implies the disappearance of the vulnerable face and body
of the opponent and thus removes moral-psychological
barriers to killing. However, the paper also shows that this
influence is at least weakened by current surveillance
technologies, which make possible a kind of ‘empathic
bridging’ by which the fighter’s opponent on the ground is
re-humanized, re-faced, and re-embodied. This ‘mutation’
or unintended ‘hacking’ of the practice is a problem for
drone pilots and for those who order them to kill, but
revealing its moral-epistemic possibilities opens up new
avenues for imagining morally better ways of technology-
mediated fighting.

Science fiction narratives have not only influenced the way the majority of people imagine the future, but they have also shaped the general expectations for the technological development. This phenomenon has been called “science fiction prototyping” by Brian David Johnson. The prototype of a robot is created by science fiction works. Robots as artificially created entities are often presented as potential “members” of future society. Therefore, their legal status in imaginary reality is worth considering. The analysis of Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott and I, Robot (2004) by Alex Proyas juxtaposes features that, according to the legal tradition, are most often attributed to moral subjects of legal protection with human-like features of robots. The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this study involves applying legal reasoning to the study of science fiction.