Machine ethics offers an alternative solution for artificial intelligence (AI) safety governance. In order to mitigate risks in human-robot interactions, robots will have to comply with humanity’s ethical and legal norms, once they’ve merged into our daily life with highly autonomous capability. In terms of technical challenges, there are still many open questions in machine ethics. For example, what is deontic logic and how can it be used for improving AI safety? How do we fashion the knowledge representation for ethical robots? What about the adaptiveness of the ethical governance? These are all significant questions for us to investigate.

In this interview, we invite Prof. Ronald C. Arkin to share his insights on robot ethics, with a focus on its technical aspects.