Computational Machine Ethics: A Survey

Abstract

Computational Machine Ethics (CME) is an interdisciplinary field that integrates moral philosophy into an agent’s decision-making process, contributing to the broader domain of Artificial Intelligence Ethics. Technological advancements have transformed the world, where technology has become an integral part of society, progressively given more autonomy in making judgments within various domains in our lives. Inevitably, issues of ethics come into play in these judgments, making ethical decision-making in machines an increasingly critical problem to solve. This survey provides an overview of CME, highlighting the breadth of directions and the use of techniques within the field. We also provide some background on the ethical dimension before introducing our taxonomy used to categorise and detail the variety of existing approaches from a more technical perspective. Finally, we identify limitations in the research and suggest potential open challenges for future work.