3 - Ethics for Machines

Summary

“A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.”

– Isaac Asimov's First Law of Robotics

The first book report i ever gave, to mrs. slatin's first grade class in Lake, Mississippi, in 1961, was on a slim volume entitled You Will Go to the Moon. I have spent the intervening years thinking about the future.

The four decades that have passed have witnessed advances in science and physical technology that would be incredible to a child of any other era. I did see my countryman Neil Armstrong step out onto the moon. The processing power of the computers that controlled the early launches can be had today in a five-dollar calculator. The genetic code has been broken and the messages are being read – and in some cases, rewritten. Jet travel, then a perquisite of the rich, is available to all.

That young boy that I was spent time on other things besides science fiction. My father was a minister, and we talked (or in many cases, I was lectured and questioned!) about good and evil, right and wrong, and what our duties were to others and to ourselves.

In the same four decades, progress in the realm of ethics has been modest. Almost all of it has been in the expansion of inclusiveness, broadening the definition of who deserves the same consideration one always gave neighbors. I experienced some of this first hand as a schoolchild in 1960s Mississippi.