Response to "Sometimes it's hard to be a robot: A call for action on the ethics of abusing artificial agents"

I am very pleased to be able to respond to Blay Whitby’s article as it introduces an extremely important topic. It is important for two reasons. First because artificial agents, from avatars on airport touch-screens to domestic robots are becoming part of our lives and we need to understand the ethical implications of this. Second because the ‘nearly human but not quite’ nature of these agents pushes us to make distinctions that are not a problem when we compare humans with stones, humans with cars, or even humans with animals – by understanding the ethics of robots and agents we may better understand ourselves.

In Whitby’s article there are four main actors: a person (P), a robot/agent (R), human third parties (T) and the robot’s designer (D). Whitby deals initially with the case when P acts in a bad way to R and the moral question is framed largely in terms of whether this directly or indirectly causes harm to T, and if so whether this should be prevented. Towards the end of the article Whitby deals with the question of D’s ethical responsibility in that D’s design of R may lead to effects on either P or T that are deemed wrong.