The Case for an Ethical Black Box

This paper proposes that robots and autonomous systems should be equipped with the equivalent of a Flight Data Recorder to continuously record sensor and relevant internal status data. We call this an ethical black box. We argue that an ethical black box will be critical to the process of discoverin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTowards Autonomous Robotic Systems pp. 262 - 273
Main Authors Winfield, Alan F. T., Jirotka, Marina
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published Cham Springer International Publishing 01.01.2017
SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Subjects
Ethical governance
Responsible robotics
Robot ethics
Traceability
Transparency
Trust
Online AccessGet full text
ISBN3319641069
9783319641065
ISSN0302-9743
1611-3349
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-64107-2_21

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Abstract This paper proposes that robots and autonomous systems should be equipped with the equivalent of a Flight Data Recorder to continuously record sensor and relevant internal status data. We call this an ethical black box. We argue that an ethical black box will be critical to the process of discovering why and how a robot caused an accident, and thus an essential part of establishing accountability and responsibility. We also argue that without the transparency afforded by an ethical black box, robots and autonomous systems are unlikely to win public trust.
AbstractList This paper proposes that robots and autonomous systems should be equipped with the equivalent of a Flight Data Recorder to continuously record sensor and relevant internal status data. We call this an ethical black box. We argue that an ethical black box will be critical to the process of discovering why and how a robot caused an accident, and thus an essential part of establishing accountability and responsibility. We also argue that without the transparency afforded by an ethical black box, robots and autonomous systems are unlikely to win public trust.
Author Jirotka, Marina
Winfield, Alan F. T.
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  givenname: Marina
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  organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, England
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Copyright Springer International Publishing AG 2017
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Editor Gao, Yang
Lekakou, Constantina
Fallah, Saber
Jin, Yaochu
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PublicationSubtitle 18th Annual Conference, TAROS 2017, Guildford, UK, July 19–21, 2017, Proceedings
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RelatedPersons Kleinberg, Jon M.
Mattern, Friedemann
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Mitchell, John C.
Terzopoulos, Demetri
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Snippet This paper proposes that robots and autonomous systems should be equipped with the equivalent of a Flight Data Recorder to continuously record sensor and...
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StartPage 262
SubjectTerms Ethical governance
Responsible robotics
Robot ethics
Traceability
Transparency
Trust
Title The Case for an Ethical Black Box
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