Background: ‘Morals’ and ‘Machines’

This chapter defines key terms involved in the Machine Ethics debate—including, but not limited to, the fundamental terms ‘morals’ and ‘machines’—so that we can begin to understand what we are trying to achieve when we refer to building ‘moral machines’. It begins with an introduction to the philosophy and psychology of morality, exploring key philosophical ethical theories such as Virtue Ethics and Utilitarianism, then looking at Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. The second part of the chapter defines key technical terms, including ‘machine’, ‘robot’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’, and gives a brief introduction to Machine Learning.