Ethics Inf Technol (2012) 14:137–149
DOI 10.1007/s10676-012-9290-1
ORIGINAL PAPER
Out of character: on the creation of virtuous machines
Ryan Tonkens
Published online: 21 February 2012
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract The emerging discipline of Machine Ethics is
concerned with creating autonomous artificial moral agents
that perform ethically significant actions out in the world.
Recently, Wallach and Allen (Moral machines: teaching
robots right from wrong, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2009) and others have argued that a virtue-based moral
framework is a promising tool for meeting this end.
However, even if we could program autonomous machines
to follow a virtue-based moral framework, there are certain
pressing ethical issues that need to be taken into account,
prior to the implementation and development stages. Here
I examine whether the creation of virtuous autonomous
machines is morally permitted by the central tenets of
virtue ethics. It is argued that the creation of such machines
violates certain tenets of virtue ethics, and hence that the
creation and use of those machines is impermissible. One
upshot of this is that, although virtue ethics may have a role
to play in certain near-term Machine Ethics projects (e.g.
designing systems that are sensitive to ethical consider-
ations), machine ethicists need to look elsewhere for a
moral framework to implement into their autonomous
artificial moral agents, Wallach and Allen’s claims
notwithstanding.
Keywords Machine ethics
Autonomous artificial moral
agents
Virtue ethics
Social justice
Wallach and Allen
R. Tonkens (&)
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts and
Professional Studies, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Room
S426 Ross Building, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
e-mail: tonkens@yorku.ca
Introduction
As machines become increasingly sophisticated, their
ability to act out in the world becomes more pronounced, to
the point where they will be able to (or already do) perform
autonomous actions with potentially significant and far-
reaching moral consequences. Insofar as these machines
can perform ethically relevant actions out in the world,
then we would need them to behave morally. In light of
this, one task of the discipline of Machine Ethics (or Robot
Ethics) has become to develop autonomous artificial moral
agents (hereafter AMAs), fuelled by the belief that creating
these sorts of machines is something that we ought to do.1
Yet, this presumption is rarely scrutinized.2 This is
evidenced by the fact that the main focus of machine
ethicists thus far has been towards the engineering and
computational barriers that stand in the way of the suc-
cessful development of AMAs, consequently leaving other
(ethical) issues unattended. Thus, one of the primary con-
cerns of Machine Ethics is to figure out what ethical
framework is most conducive to implementation into
(autonomous) machines, so as to render them ethical (i.e. to
program them in such a way so that they behave in an
ethically sustainable manner). Yet, there are also ethical
1
In addition to making sure that these robots are safe for human use
and behave in an ethically sustainable manner, Machine Ethics is also
concerned with other important issues, including the improvement of
our understanding of (human) ethics through trying to implement
moral decision-making faculties into robots.
2
There are some noteworthy exceptions here. See for example
Singer (2009) and Krishnan (2009). Also, the recent establishment of
the international committee for robot arms control stems from a
growing concern surrounding the development of autonomous robots
used in warfare and other militarized settings.
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concerns that need to be attended to, prior to the imple-
mentation and development stages.
Broadly speaking, the purpose of this paper is to explore
some of the ethical issues that arise with respect to the act
of developing autonomous AMAs. In the background here
is the question of whether the sort of AMAs currently being
proposed for development ought to be developed in the first
place. I address this question (albeit somewhat indirectly)
by examining whether this goal of Machine Ethics (i.e. to
develop autonomous moral machines) is deemed to be
morally permissible by the moral framework(s) that we are
attempting to implement into those machines. Part of my
argument is that satisfying this constraint represents a
serious challenge for Machine Ethics: to identify a moral
framework that can be successfully implemented into
machines, in such a way so that machines can (do) act
ethically out in the world, and whose own tenets condone
the creation of those AMAs in the first place.3 Although
there may be some benefits to creating certain kinds of
AMAs for certain purposes, part of the worry here is that
these could also be mitigated if the moral framework that
such AMAs are programmed to follow does not allow for
their development.
Here I elucidate this challenge through an examination
of the development of virtuous machines (i.e. autonomous
AMAs that are designed to follow a virtue-based moral
framework). In Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right
from Wrong, Wallach and Allen argue that a hybrid com-
putational approach is a promising—indeed a necessary—
strategy for implementing ethics into AMAs (2009, 117).4
They suggest that a virtue-ethical framework contains
elements conducive to both top-down and bottom-up
computational approaches. Because of this, the authors
claim that a virtue-based approach to developing AMAs
will be quite fruitful in this vein.5 According to Wallach
and Allen, virtue ethics is a superior ethic to both deon-
tology and consequentialism, at least with respect to their
computability. And since this is what’s taken to matter at
this stage in the game, with this insight we are one step
closer to the successful development of AMAs.6 However,
although it is important to ask whether a virtue-ethical
3
Elsewhere I have argued for this claim at length. Tonkens (2009).
4
Wallach and Allen are not alone in making this claim. See for
example Lin et al. (2008).
5
Wallach and Allen (2009, 119) explicitly set the disagreements
surrounding the intricacies of virtue ethics to one side, in favour of
attending to ‘‘the computational tractability of virtue ethics.’’
6
It is important to note that Wallach and Allen (2009) do not argue
that virtue ethics is the best or the only promising source for
developing moral machines, and they consider other approaches as
well. Moreover, it is worth noting that these authors also have some
reservations about the development and use of certain kinds of robots
for certain kinds of purposes. See especially their Chapter 3 and
Chapter 12.
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R. Tonkens
framework could be successfully computed into
machines, it must also be asked whether the act of cre-
ating virtuous machines is permitted by the tenets of
virtue ethics. Although a virtue-ethical framework may
be implementable into autonomous machines,7 we also
need to ask whether it is virtuous to develop virtuous
machines; if the act of creating virtuous machines vio-
lates the tenets of virtue ethics, then doing so is morally
problematic.
In the first two sections below, I discuss the sort of
machines under issue here and elaborate on the nature of
the proposed ethical constraint and the methodology of my
overall project. In section three, I outline the tenets of a
virtue-ethical framework (drawing primarily from the work
of Hursthouse (1999)), which provides the theoretical basis
for a critical analysis of the development of virtuous
machines undertaken in the remainder of the paper. In the
subsequent three sections, I take up different tenets central
to this virtue-ethical framework, and apply them to the
development of autonomous AMAs. One way to examine
the moral standing of creating virtuous AMAs is to ask
whether doing so is consistent with the various virtues that
are relevant to the Machine Ethics project, both from the
perspective of the creator of the machine, and of the
machine itself. In the final section I analyze the act of
developing AMAs with respect to the moral character of
the engineer, and ask whether the creation of autonomous
AMAs is something that promotes the virtues associated
with social justice.
In the end, there is good reason to believe that the
development of virtuous machines violates virtue ethics in
several respects. Regardless of whether we are able to
program robots to follow a virtue-based framework, the
creation of such robots is problematic, since doing so is
impermissible under the tenets of that same moral frame-
work; autonomous machines that were programmed to
follow a virtue-based moral framework would come to
understand their creation (their very existence) as repre-
senting a breach of that very same moral framework.
Although autonomous AMAs could be the sorts of things
that are virtuous agents, and perhaps even behave virtu-
ously in practice, their development and use undermines
the virtues associated with widespread social justice, both
with respect to our treatment of these artificial moral
agents, and since their existence and use (for certain pur-
poses) promises to exacerbate existing social injustices. If
this is the case, although a virtue-based framework may
still be a useful tool used for the development of less
sophisticated kinds of moral machines, machine ethicists
7
Of course, this remains to be seen. Even if creating virtuous AMAs
is consistent with virtue ethics, actually creating virtuous machines
may prove to be quite difficult in practice.
Out of character
have good reason to look beyond virtue ethics for a moral
framework to implement into their autonomous robots,
Wallach and Allen’s claims notwithstanding.
Virtuous artificial moral agents
What exactly is an Artificial Moral Agent (or an ethical
robot or a moral machine)? Here I follow Moor (2006) who
distinguishes between four types of moral agency, two of
which are relevant for our purposes: (1) explicit ethical
agents and (2) full ethical agents. AMAs falling into these
two categories have the distinctive features that, not only
can they act out in the world, but they can do so with little
to no human supervision.
Explicit ethical agents have the ability to make explicit
ethical judgments, to justify those judgments, and to act out
in the world based on these moral deliberations. Examples
here include certain advanced automated military weapons
currently under development or already in use. These
machines are ‘capable of autonomously seeking out,
attacking, and destroying legitimate enemy targets’ (Spar-
row 2007, 63). Full ethical agents go beyond explicit
ethical agency since they also possess capacities such as
consciousness, emotion, creativity, et cetera. The para-
digmatic full ethical agent is a ‘normal’ adult human being.
As of yet, no machine has reached the status of full ethical
agency. Much of what makes Machine Ethics relevant is
that it investigates whether it is possible to create artificial
full ethical agents, and to help us prepare just in case it is.8
Autonomy is being used in this paper in the sense of the
ability to set the course of one’s own actions in real world
contexts, based on the information and goals that one has,
and the decision-making schema one is operating from;
autonomy in the sense of rationally self-directed action. To
be sure, machine autonomy is a highly contentious issue.
Yet, it seems as though something like the emergence of
self-directed (and perhaps novel) behaviour for reasons of
the machine’s own justification would constitute a suffi-
cient degree of autonomy to meet the threshold being
demanded here. There is no (or need not be a) human
programmer or user that is directly deciding how the
machine is to proceed in practice under the specific cir-
cumstances at hand. Although the machine has been pro-
grammed to follow certain rules during its conception,
these rules can either be overruled, or interpreted, or
applied in unique ways to unique situations, to the extent
that performing the resulting action requires input beyond
8
That the creation of these kinds of sophisticated autonomous
machines is one of the goals of Machine Ethics is obvious from a
survey of the current literature. See for example Asaro (2008),
Sparrow (2007), and Wallach and Allen (2009).
139
what those specific rules could provide, input that is gen-
erated by the machine itself, based (in part) on its inter-
actions with its environment. Being autonomous demands
more than the machine’s simply making (or being able to
make) mistakes because of faulty programming or its
misuse by a human operator.9
What I am concerned with in this paper is any machine
that falls into the categories of explicit or full ethical agent.
Importantly, the specific sort of AMAs under issue are
machines that can deliberate over, make moral decisions
about, and perform ethically consequential actions in real
world contexts, and that do so by appealing to a virtue-
based moral framework.10
A challenge for machine ethics
Much of the work that is currently being done in Machine
Ethics concerns issues of how to best implement a given
moral framework into the machinery of a robot, so as to
render it ethical.11 The choice about which moral frame-
work to implement into machines has been understood to
come down to which one is most conducive to being
translated into computational terms. Many possibilities
have been examined,12 some of which are quite promising,
at least from an engineering perspective. What has yet to
come up, however, is the issue of whether or not the ethical
frameworks that we are trying to implement into machines
themselves allow for the creation of those kinds of AMAs.
9
Wallach and Allen (2009, 26) adopt a similar understanding of
machine autonomy, as does Sparrow (2007).
10
There are other sorts of moral machines that may be developed,
ones that do not have the ability to act (autonomously) out in the real
world. For example, moral machines may be developed that could
serve as ethical advisors to humans, but which do not themselves act
in any robust sense beyond giving such advice. The worries presented
here about the use of a virtue-based moral framework in the discipline
of Machine Ethics do not necessarily apply to these and other similar
moral machines. Thus, even if the implementation of virtue ethics into
certain kinds of explicit and full AMAs turns out to be problematic,
that moral framework may still have a role to play in more near-term
Machine Ethics projects (e.g. building ethical sensitivity into
machines). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this
point. At the same time, if we will be building up from such near-term
platforms in order to develop explicit and full AMAs, then it may
prove to be very helpful and prudent to start thinking about this
consistency constraint presently, even when the development of
explicit and full AMAs is only on the distant horizon.
11
Much of this section has been adapted from Tonkens (2009).
12
Some of the moral frameworks that have been examined with
respect to their computability include Rossian prima facie duties
(Anderson and Anderson 2007b), Utilitarianism (Grau 2006), Kantian
moral theory (e.g. Powers 2006), and virtue ethics (Wallach and Allen
2009).
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The question of what moral framework we ought to
implement into autonomous AMAs for them to follow is
quite complex, and I cannot do it justice here. There
seems to be at least three different ways of approaching it:
(1) determine the best moral framework, and implement
that framework into machines, assuming that this frame-
work is computable (and, hoping that it allows for the
development of these sorts of AMAs); or (2) determine
which moral framework is most conducive to successful
implementation into machines, and proceed to implement
that framework, regardless of whether that framework
speaks against doing so, and regardless of whether it is the
best moral framework; or (3) determine which moral
frameworks allow for implementation into machines and
are computable, and choose the best one from that pool.
Machine Ethics will not get very far if it depends on
satisfying (1), since consensus is characteristically lack-
ing here (although this says nothing about whether or not
we ought to wait for a verdict). The favoured approach of
machine ethicists thus far seems to be (2), although the
argument I advance here speaks against this strategy. But
on (3), we run the risk of not using the best moral
framework, whether we are aware of it or not. Further-
more, it may turn out that no moral frameworks meet the
criteria in (3), in which case the (long-term) goals of
Machine Ethics may need to be abandoned. Moreover, it
is unclear that consensus could be reached here either, and
thus we may have different AMAs built in different lab-
oratories following different (and perhaps incompatible)
moral codes. The important point here is that the moral
perspective from which we start makes a difference with
respect to the demands we put on the ethics of machine
morality, and how we gauge the success of the Machine
Ethics project more generally.
By choosing moral framework x to implement into
AMAs, engineers and roboticists are subsequently (albeit
perhaps only implicitly) subscribing to x—whether because
it is the best moral framework or the one most conducive to
implementation—and are asking the resulting AMAs to
abide by x as well. Yet, if it turns out that x does not allow
for the creation of those AMAs (for that purpose), then we
are faced with a problematic incompatibility between the
moral code we are subscribing to and simultaneously
implementing into machines, and the tenets of that very
same moral code. If asked the moral standing of the creation
of autonomous AMAs (for that purpose), such AMAs would
concede, through their application of the moral framework
they have been designed to follow, that their very existence
is in direct contradiction with their moral code.
It is right to ask ‘‘if ethics is the sort of thing that can be
computed’’ (Anderson and Anderson 2007a, 18), and it is
important to assess our moral frameworks ‘based on the
feasibility of implementing them as computer programs’
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R. Tonkens
(Allen et al. 2006, 15). But this does not demand enough;
not only do we need a moral agent that can act consistently
with the moral laws prescribed for it, but we also need to
ensure that we are allowed to create those machines in the
first place, based on the dictates of the moral framework we
seek to implement. In other words, machine ethicists need
to ensure the compatibility between the moral framework
that they implement into machines, the moral standing of
the act of creating AMAs, and the tenets of the moral
framework being implemented. Failure to do so entails that
we are behaving (and asking robots to behave) against the
prescriptions of the moral framework we are designing
those machines to follow. Put bluntly, it is hypocritical to
ask machines to follow moral rules that do not permit their
creation in the first place.
An example may be helpful to illustrate the methodol-
ogy being adopted here.13 In her ‘‘Asimov’s ‘three laws of
robotics’ and machine metaethics,’’ Susan Anderson argues
that ‘‘Asimov’s Laws of Robotics [LoR] are an unsatis-
factory basis for Machine Ethics, regardless of the [moral]
status of the machine’’ (2008, 477–478). Most of Ander-
son’s argument rests on considering the plausibility of LoR
as a moral framework used for creating moral machines
from the perspective of Kantian moral theory. According to
Anderson, to the extent that we would be treating robots—
in this case, Asimovian AMAs—as slaves used for
anthropocentric ends, Kantian moral law deems this to be a
moral breach, regardless of the moral status of the machine
(2008, 492).
Two important points are worth noting here. First, it is
unclear why (or how) we are to assess the creation of
Asimovian AMAs (i.e. AMAs that are designed to follow
Asimov’s LoR) on Kantian grounds. For one thing, if it is
proper to say that a Kantian picture of morality is the best
picture of morality for machines (or at least better than
LoR), then presumably we would want to program our
robots to follow Kantian moral law, rather than LoR.
Moreover, (potentially) competing moral claims generated
by different moral frameworks does not show much beyond
the fact that different moral frameworks may generate
competing moral claims. It is unsurprising that Kantian
morality—which emphasizes liberal democratic ideals for
all rational and autonomous agents living together in the
moral community—would not condone the enslavement of
any such agents. Conversely, Asimovian LoR has no such
ideals built into its system, and hence remains silent about
whether the enslavement of Asimovian AMAs to serve
human ends represents a moral violation. Second, Ander-
son is correct to ask whether these sorts of machines ought
to be created—in the sense of whether their creation is
consistent with human moral standards. But this needs to
13
For a much more thorough example, see Tonkens (2009).
Out of character
be taken a step further, to the point where we ask whether
the moral framework that we are trying to implement into
machines itself allows for the creation of those machines.
Asimov’s first LoR states that ‘robots may not injure a
human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to
come to harm’ (Anderson 2008, 477). Although we may be
able to effectively compute this rule into machines, and
have machines successfully act in accordance with it, it is
unclear whether we would be allowed to develop certain
kinds of machines, based on the tenets of LoR. With respect
to autonomous machines used in warfare, for example,
insofar as these machines would be expected to harm and
kill legitimate human targets on the opposing military
force, then they will routinely violate the first LoR, a law
they have been programmed to follow. In this way, by
creating these machines to serve the purpose of military
combat, their very creation and use violates LoR, and
hence with them being law-abiding Asimovian AMAs. If
we want to develop ‘killer robots’ (Sparrow 2007), then we
need to program them with a moral framework that is both
computable (which Asimov’s LoR may be), and one that
also allows for the creation of those machines in the first
place (which Asimov’s LoR does not seem to leave room
for).14 LoR as a moral framework is utterly denied by the
development and use of autonomous AMAs for the purpose
of lethal military activity.
The crucial point is that we need to find a match
between the ethical frameworks we can implement into
AMAs and those we are allowed to implement. Because of
this, we need to expand our focus beyond the computa-
tional and developmental aspects of Machine Ethics, and
include considerations regarding the ethics of Machine
Ethics.
Normative virtue ethics
There are many different virtue-ethical frameworks on
offer. Because of this, much of how we answer the question
‘Is the creation of virtuous autonomous AMAs, for purpose
x, morally permissible (from the perspective of virtue
ethics)?’ depends on which virtue-ethical theory we sub-
scribe to. Here I examine this issue through the lens of
Hursthouse’s normative virtue ethic, as outlined primarily
in her On Virtue Ethics (1999). I have chosen Hursthouse’s
14
Whether we can get around this problem by simply not program-
ming this sort of rule into combat robots is an open question. On
Asimovian grounds, it would be ethically inconsistent to do so.
141
view for several reasons, most notably because it is
widely recognizable in the contemporary literature on
virtue ethics, it promises to be sufficiently action guiding,
and because it offers both (1) rules that may be imple-
mentable into machines for them to follow, and (2)
accommodates a learning aspect of moral development. In
this way, there is reason to believe that it could generate
the sort of hybrid computational framework that Wallach
and Allen and others are looking for. If there turns out to
be serious flaws with Hursthouse’s view, then we should
look elsewhere for a better theoretical contender. This
being said, my goal is to examine two things: (1) whether
implementing something like Hursthouse’s virtue ethic
into machines could yield ethical machines, and, more
importantly, (2) whether Hursthouse-style virtue ethics
allows for the development of virtuous machines, i.e.
whether implementing this moral framework into auton-
omous AMAs is morally permissible.
Rather than emphasizing an agent’s duty or the conse-
quences of her actions, virtue ethics is concerned primarily
with the moral character of agents. In this way, an
assessment of the character of the acting agent is at the
foundation of moral judgment. According to Hursthouse, in
order to be virtuous, an agent must establish a virtuous
character, in the sense that she must form the dispositions
requisite for performing virtuous actions, indicative of fine
inner states of character. On Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian
account, virtues are those character traits that promote
flourishing in some way—her view is a version of eudai-
monism—where flourishing is taken to be an achievement
requisite for living a good (human) life. Our best bet for
flourishing as human beings is to habitually act in accor-
dance with the virtues, and to avoid acting viciously.
One important objection that is often raised against
virtue ethics is that it cannot tell us how to act (i.e. it is
insufficiently normative). Whereas deontology and conse-
quentialism offer explicit guidelines for acting morally, the
worry is that there is really no action-guidance on offer
from virtue ethics, since there are no (explicit) rules to
follow. Although this charge needs to be taken seriously,
Hursthouse (1999, 28) argues (I think rightly) that there is a
normative component to virtue ethics; agents are to act in
accordance with how a (paradigmatic) virtuous person
would act under the given circumstances:
An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would
characteristically (i.e. acting in character) do in the
circumstances.
Given an enumeration of the virtues and vices, we can
determine whether an action is courageous (say) by asking
what a courageous person would do under the circum-
stances, and act accordingly. It is by referring to what a real
or hypothetical appropriately qualified agent would do in a
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particular context that imperfect moral agents can gain an
understanding of how they are to act.15
Creating virtuous AMAs is a novel undertaking, and we
may not know whether a paradigmatic virtuous person
(engineer, roboticist) would create such a machine, since
no one has ever been able to do so before. Yet, given an
understanding of what it means to be a virtuous engineer,
we can reasonably deliberate about what a virtuous engi-
neer would do under those circumstances. Specifically, we
can ask whether the development of virtuous AMAs is
consistent with the character traits (virtues) that a virtuous
engineer would possess, and draw plausible conclusions
from this.
Before doing so, however, there are several other theo-
retical issues that need to be discussed. Even if it turns out
that the creation and use of autonomous AMAs is some-
thing a virtuous agent would do, there may still be other
problems with implementing a virtue-based moral frame-
work into those machines. In the following three sections I
ask whether autonomous machines could be virtuous moral
agents, whether our existing understanding of (human)
virtue could be applied to virtuous machines, what it would
mean for machines to flourish, and whether the learning
component characteristic of virtue-based moral develop-
ment is a desirable element in moral machines.
Can machines be virtuous?
Depending on whom one asks, in order for robots to be
genuine (explicit or full) moral agents, they would need to be
conscious, rational, autonomous, and possess at least some
(proto-) emotions. Furthermore, in order to be virtuous moral
agents, machines would also need to possess character traits,
since actions are assessed based primarily on whether they
were performed by an agent who acts in accordance with the
various virtues (e.g. courage, charity, fidelity, et cetera),
which are generally taken to be indicative of fine inner states
of the agent (Hursthouse 1999).
Even if machines could be conscious, rational, autono-
mous, and emotional—and controversy surrounds all of
these issues—it is unclear whether machines could have
anything like traits of character, in the sense of having fine
inner psychological states. Much of this depends on
15
There may not be much difference for a machine between
following rules designed for some set of circumstances and modeling
what a virtuous agent would do in those circumstances. Indeed,
machines may be well suited for modelling what a perfectly virtuous
agent would do, perhaps even more so than humans. Hursthouse’s
claim seems especially pertinent for Machine Ethics since we can
program the machine in ways that are much more coded (explicitly
action guiding) than virtue ethics is usually charged as being able to
offer.
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R. Tonkens
whether machines could have anything resembling psy-
chological states in the first place. Yet, a weaker (yet
plausible) understanding of ‘‘character’’ could refer to
something like enduring dispositions to behave in certain
ways, rather than the somewhat mystical idea of fine inner
psychological states. On this understanding of character,
insofar as a machine was programmed to behave in a
certain way, and did so consistently over time and in the
relevant situations, then we may be able to say that the
machine displayed behaviour indicative of established
character traits, even if it had no such traits underlying its
behaviour. Indeed, just as we need to be open to the idea of
multiple realizability of pain or consciousness (for exam-
ple), we need to be open to the idea that traits of character
could be realized in ways quite unlike the way they are
manifested in human psychology and physiology. All of
this is to say that, assuming that robots could have the other
qualities deemed necessary for moral agency, they could
meet the criteria for being moral agents defined under a
virtue-ethical framework. And, autonomous robots that do
not act immorally (e.g. do not lie, or murder, or commit
injustices, et cetera) would be moral machines to a suffi-
cient degree, even if they were doing so merely from the
fact that they could not act contrary to their programming.
There is reason to argue that these machines could be
moral machines that follow a virtue-ethical framework, and
that the goal of Machine Ethics would be met to this extent.
Flourishing and machine nature
On many virtue-ethical accounts, the purpose or nature of
an entity makes a moral difference (Hursthouse 1999;
Swanton 2003). In the case of humans, our purpose is often
thought to be something like living a characteristically
good life for humans. Human virtues are those character
traits that are necessary for the promotion of human
flourishing in some way, in the sense that acting viciously
reliably and predictably compromises one’s ability to live a
good life.16 Several issues come up here when we transfer
our human-centered virtue-ethical framework to machines.
For one thing, just because a certain character trait is a
human virtue, it does not automatically follow that it would
be a virtue for machines as well. The virtue of courage is a
telling example here. An AMA used in warfare (for
example) may not be able to be courageous in any robust
16
This appeal to naturalism has drawn its fair share of criticism.
Moreover, it is unclear how much the project of creating artificial
moral agents is conducive to this way of putting things. The important
aspect of Hursthouse-style naturalism for our purposes is the idea that
flourishing supervenes on an entity’s purpose, presumably regardless
of whether this purpose originates naturally or is manufactured in
some sense.
Out of character
sense of the term. The human that always faces danger
without fear is rash; the human that routinely shies away
from danger is cowardly; the human that faces danger in
the proper circumstances, for the right reasons, and in the
right way, is courageous. But the source of a robot’s
behaviour makes a difference here, and acting as a coura-
geous human would act does not alone guarantee its acting
virtuously.
For instance, the machine may not possess anything like
emotion, and hence may be incapable of experiencing fear,
or what it’s like to be afraid. Because of this, the machine
would always ‘fearlessly’ confront the dangerous situations
it is presented with; its reason for acting could not be one
of ‘facing fearful situations with poise’, since it does not
actually recognize such situations as fearful in the first
place. Regardless of whether the military AMA could
disregard or reject sound orders to confront dangerous,
risky, or otherwise terrifying situations, the typical reasons
for fleeing danger or refraining from taking risks (i.e. fear
and anxiety) may not be part of the machine’s repertoire.
Because of this, it would be a stretch to say that the robot
could be rash, or cowardly, or courageous; a machine’s
decision of whether to persist or to flee would be based on
factors irrelevant to the nature of cowardliness or bravery.
One upshot of this is that we should be hesitant to auto-
matically transfer (all) human virtues to machines, at least
without qualification.17
Secondly, the purpose of machines may be strikingly
different from that of human beings. On Hursthouse’s
understanding of human nature, the purpose of human
beings is to live a good human life. But, we need to ask
whether machines could flourish, in the sense of ‘leading a
good life’ for a machine. Perhaps more importantly, we
need to ask whether the purposes we intend on designing
robots to have are consistent with the flourishing of those
machines (qua autonomous machine), and the virtues
requisite for flourishing in that sense. On the sort of virtue-
ethical account being appealed to here, it does not make
sense to speak of virtuous moral agents (whether human or
machine) whose conditions for flourishing as such do not
influence how they ought to behave (and how others ought
to treat them as well). Whereas forcing18 humans into
17
Considering that Aristotle thought that the most noble death
possible was to die courageously in battle, he may have been an
advocate of (just) warfare. But, given that combat robots may not be
able to be courageous, and that replacing human soldiers with robots
may lessen the former’s opportunity to display courage in battle
(since they would be relegated to remote positions or not appear on
the battlefield at all) and thus to die courageously, our drive towards
automated warfare may have Aristotle rotating in his grave.
18
I return to this issue later on. Because human moral agents are
autonomous, then making them do things against their will is
typically morally problematic. Insofar as AMAs would be sufficiently
autonomous, then assigning them duties against their will or without
143
military or geriatric care service may compromise human
flourishing to a certain extent, the same may or may not
hold true for robots. Forcing a human being to care for
others against her will is morally questionable, and invol-
untary military conscription has received widespread
disapproval. Yet, insofar as virtue is linked with an entity’s
purpose, then a machine’s having the purpose of military
combat or geriatric care may not be inconsistent with the
flourishing of that machine, qua machine. Indeed, to the
extent that these robots performed these tasks, doing so
may in fact promote their overall flourishing.19
The crucial issue here becomes the extent to which
designing moral machines for specific purposes is morally
permissible, according to virtue ethics. In particular, as
discussed later on (Sect. 8), issues of social justice arise
here, which seem to place restrictions on the sort of
purposes that we may design autonomous robots to have in
the first place; the purpose(s) that we design autonomous
AMAs to have makes a moral difference. Although
machines may be able to flourish (qua machine) with quite
diverse purposes than those of human beings, we need to
ask whether creating otherwise autonomous machines for
those purposes is indicative of a virtuous character on
behalf of their creator and with the moral treatment of
autonomous moral agents in general. If designing and using
machines for certain purposes turns out to be less-than-
virtuous (e.g. indicative of a flawed character on behalf of
the engineer, roboticist, user), then creating those machines
would violate a central tenet of virtue ethics, namely, act
virtuously.
Footnote 18 continued
their consent may be similarly morally problematic. We could get
around this problem my simply not making AMAs autonomous,
although this flies in the face of the goal of Machine Ethics, as I
understand it. Thus, it seems as though the project of developing
autonomous AMAs may demand that we take their autonomy
(interests, rights) into account in the ways that we treat them and the
roles we assign to them.
19
Part of this may depend on our understanding of ‘‘machine’’. To be
sure, machines have hitherto been understood as being tools (things,
objects) manufactured and used by humans for achieving human
goals. If we want to continue to accept this traditional definition of
‘‘machine’’ unconditionally, then it seems to follow that the creation
of moral machines would be a matter of programming rules of our
choosing into machines, rules that would need only to satisfy the
requirements of enabling the machine (tool, object) to achieve its
purpose of satisfying the ends of its human designer and user. And
yet, the traditional definition of ‘‘machine’’ is being challenged by
recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics research, and
may warrant significant revision or expansion—especially given the
emergence of machines that are sufficiently sophisticated so as to
possess (some of) the qualities central to moral agency. To the extent
that these new kinds of machines would be moral agents, then they
would no longer just be tools (things, objects) used for human ends,
but would also be independent moral entities of their own. It is here
that considerations of their flourishing arise.
123
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Becoming virtuous
Wallach and Allen (2009, 119) rightly point out that a
virtue-based moral framework has both top-down and
bottom-up elements. With respect to the former, some-
thing like Hursthouse’s virtue rules (or ‘v-rules’) could
serve as a top-down computational tool. We may be able
to implement rules such as ‘Act honestly’, ‘Do not act
unjustly’, and ‘Do not act foolishly’ into the machine for
it to follow. Indeed, according to Hursthouse, all virtues
are accompanied by a prescription for action, and all
vices a prohibition. In this way, virtue ethics does have
normative rules on offer for the potential implementation
into robots. What about the bottom-up aspect of virtue
ethics?
Even assuming that robots could learn to develop vir-
tuous characters and to behave virtuously, there may nev-
ertheless be reason to guard against creating robots that
need to learn how to act morally in practice. On one hand,
this bottom-up orientation suggests a welcome aspect to
machine morality, i.e. machines could learn from experi-
ence and act appropriately in novel situations. But, on the
other hand, we run the risk of autonomous machines acting
immorally during their (ongoing) process of becoming
virtuous. The learning aspect of virtue ethics should be
cause for concern, at least to the extent that robots would
need to (continue to) learn as they are already acting out in
the world. At the very least, we need to assess the potential
risks of allowing a moral learning curve in autonomous
machines. Even if machines could learn how to act virtu-
ously in the laboratory, transferring that knowledge to real-
world dilemmas may be limited. Depending on what the
consequences are when a given robot does not act morally,
we may want to put restrictions on the extent to which
robots would need to learn how to behave in the situations
they encounter once they leave the laboratory. To the
extent that learning to behave morally is often accompa-
nied with moral failure, there is some reason to be wary of
implementing a bottom-up computational framework into
autonomous AMAs.
But, perhaps a learning curve in morality is no real cause
for concern with respect to autonomous AMAs, just as it is
no cause for concern with respect to human children (for
example). Recognizing that we live in an imperfect world,
and that humans are not typically moral saints, there may
be no reason why we need to eliminate the ability of
machines to perform less-than-moral actions altogether, or
guard against all possible scenarios where they may not act
morally. This standard may be too high. Moreover, it is
generally accepted that it is (in part) because an agent
could act immorally (if she so chooses to) that her actions
can truly be said to be moral in the first place; part of what
makes a virtuous act virtuous is that the agent could have
123
R. Tonkens
acted viciously, but did not.20 A machine that behaves
immorally during its process of becoming virtuous does not
automatically undermine its status as a moral machine.
Indeed, in order to be a proper moral agent, it must have
the ability to not act morally (however limited), something
which the learning aspect of virtue-ethics readily
accommodates.
Nevertheless, during the learning phase of moral
development, if such machines are able to act out in the
real world and perform actions with serious moral con-
sequences, then the benefits of having them there despite
their potential faults and moral transgressions may need to
meet a higher threshold than do human children, since we
do not need to develop these machines in the way that we
‘need’ to continue to procreate. Indeed, the above con-
siderations unveil a troublesome dilemma: We need our
autonomous robots to be able to act immorally to a certain
extent—because we need them to be able to adjust to
novel situations, which may demand that they have the
sort of resources that enable them to learn from their trials
and errors in practice, and because only agents that could
act contrary to virtue can be genuine moral agents—but
the extent to which they can act immorally represents a
strong reason against creating these sorts of machines in
the first place. The goal of Machine Ethics is to create
ethical robots, not robots that sometimes act ethically, or
that can act unethically’.21 The extent to which we are
willing to accept that machines can act immorally depends
to a large extent on why we want to create these kinds of
robots in the first place (among other things). One reason is
that we could (presumably) remove the element of human
risk and error from complicated, dangerous, and highly
stressful moral contexts, such as situations in warfare where
noncombatants may be present (Arkin 2009b). But to the
extent that machines would be susceptible to error in such
situations (or even more commonplace contexts), then their
existence may become somewhat futile.22
This point can be made even without assuming that the
level of error in machines would be comparable to that of
humans; to the extent that autonomous machines could
shoot innocent civilians, or miscalculate the dosage of
medication to be given to a patient, et cetera, these may be
(inherent) risks that we should be hesitant to accept. To be
20
Some virtue ethicists may argue that a virtuous agent could not act
viciously, since through doing so she would be revealed to be a non-
virtuous agent. Yet, virtuous agents certainly have the ability to act
viciously, they simply do not do so.
21
Tonkens (2009).
22
See Guarini and Bello (2011). Arkin (2009a, 6) has argued that it
may be impossible to eliminate an AMA’s ability to act unethically in
its entirety. However, he also argues that one benefit of using AMAs
in military combat is that those robots could be more ethical than
human beings.
Out of character
sure, we may be able to improve the performance of our
robots in the laboratory to a certain extent, and whether
machines would actually fail to (exclusively) act morally in
practice is an empirical issue. But our means for ensuring
that machines work effectively in complicated moral situ-
ations may be limited—especially prospectively, rather
than retrospectively—despite rigorous laboratory experi-
ence. Moreover, our willingness to get to the point where
we can test the effectiveness of these sorts of robots’
performance empirically depends on whether we are will-
ing to accept the potential risks of doing so (e.g. the
potential for the machine to behave immorally outside the
laboratory). At the very least, creating autonomous robots
that need to learn how to behave morally while they are
already out in the world is unsettling, and much more work
needs to be done to resolve these issues. If AMAs are
programmed without this need to learn to be virtuous (i.e.
the bottom-up aspect of virtue ethics), then the above
worries would dissipate to a certain extent, albeit at the
expense of not following the virtue-based (hybrid) moral
framework that Wallach and Allen (2009) recommend.
So far, I have discussed some of the more general issues
that arise once we adopt a virtue-based perspective.
A complete virtue-based approach to the ethics of devel-
oping autonomous machines also involves a direct assess-
ment of whether doing so is in line with specific moral
virtues. Thus, in the following section I examine whether
the creation of virtuous AMAs is just, that is, whether
doing so promotes or violates the virtues associated with
social justice.23
Ethical robots and social justice
The closer autonomous machines come to being virtuous
moral agents, the more they may need to be considered as
the proper targets of social justice. (If robots were not
genuine autonomous moral agents, then, presumably, the
goal of creating artificial moral agents would not have been
reached.) In the extreme, in the future we may be forced to
include autonomous AMAs into the wider (hitherto pre-
dominantly human) moral community, whether we like it
or not.24 One reason for this is that, according to virtue
ethics, all moral agents (human and nonhuman alike) have
moral worth as such, which entails that they deserve to be
23
There are many other virtues that are relevant in the context of
Machine Ethics (e.g. practical wisdom, modesty, integrity, et cetera),
discussion of which is beyond the scope of this paper.
24
Calverley (2008) argues for a similar conclusion. These rights need
not be comparable to human rights in all respects. Moreover, although
we would need to do this in order to be ethically consistent, I am
inclined to think that this is a point in machine development that we
should be hesitant to arrive at.
145
treated in a morally sustainable manner, that is, virtuously.
However, as virtuous AMAs move into and establish
themselves within the wider moral community, certain
ethical issues arise.
Importantly, how human moral agents treat robotic
moral agents would become a legitimate ethical concern.
Not only would we demand that robots treat humans well
(Moor 2006), but it would also be required (based on the
tenets of virtue ethics) that we treat those robots respect-
fully, charitably, justly, et cetera, as the autonomous moral
agents that they are. In short, we would be required to
behave virtuously towards virtuous robots, just as we
expect them to behave virtuously towards us.25 Yet, once
we look at the creation of AMAs from the perspective of
the creator of virtuous machines—which is to say, once we
evaluate the creation of virtuous AMAs with respect to
whether doing so is consistent with the virtues associated
with being a virtuous engineer, roboticist, and human
being26—it becomes evident that the creation of virtuous
AMAs compromises certain virtues, and hence is morally
problematic. An example here is (the virtues associated
with) social justice.
There are several virtues associated with social justice.
According to Foot (1977, 97), ‘justice has to do with what
people owe each other by way of non-interference and
positive service,’ and is closely associated with the virtue
of charity, which is ‘‘the virtue which attaches us to the
good of others.’’ Furthermore, benevolence demands that
we treat others with care and compassion, and do not act
malevolently towards them (e.g. do not cause them undue
harm). Although the virtues associated with justice may not
25
Moral agents and moral patients both have moral worth, and both
moral agency and moral patienthood put demands on the actions of
moral agents; moral agents have certain obligations towards moral
patients, who, although they do not themselves have any moral
obligations, nevertheless deserve to be treated with respect as such.
The paradigm example here is the ‘normal’ adult human (moral
agent) and the ‘normal’ human infant (moral patient). If machines
reach a certain level of sophistication and autonomy, then we may no
longer be able to justifiably ignore their moral patienthood, which, by
the received definition of the term, necessarily accompanies moral
agency. Denying them moral respect just because they are not human
moral agents is anthropocentric and inconsistent.
26
What it means to be a virtuous roboticist or engineer is an
important issue, detailed discussion of which cannot be offered here.
It is worth noting that the virtues associated with being a virtuous
engineer may be role-specific, and do not necessarily directly
correspond (in kind, in number) to the virtues associated with being
a virtuous human. Yet, insofar as all engineers are human, then it may
be the case that (a) role-specific virtues ought not to conflict with
being (able to be) a virtuous human being, and (b) no human vices
should be considered virtues associated with that role (Oakley and
Cocking 2001). For example, even if considerations of justice are
outside the scope of what it means to be a virtuous engineer, that the
virtues associated with justice are human virtues demands that the
behaviour of engineers not be inimical to them.
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146
directly supervene on rights (insofar as acting within ones
rights does not always entail that one acted virtuously27),
unjustifiably violating the rights of other moral agents
typically represents a moral breach. Indeed, since consid-
erations of social justice are central to most endorsable
moral frameworks, to the extent that the creation of certain
kinds of autonomous AMAs for certain purposes would be
unjust (to them, to us), then it would be rare to find a moral
framework that would sanction their creation. The impor-
tant point argued for below is that developing autonomous
machines that are to abide by a virtue-based moral
framework simultaneously violates certain virtues, and thus
doing so is not in alignment with the moral code we (and
our robots) are subscribing to.
Forcing autonomous moral agents (human or machine)
to perform certain tasks (e.g. forced military service, forced
labour in the geriatric care industry, forced childcare,
forced existence as a sex robot28) violates their rights and
status as autonomous moral agents. By not giving them an
opportunity to exercise their autonomy, or not giving them
a say in what tasks they will perform, or an avenue for
consent/descent in what roles they will play, we are treat-
ing them disrespectfully, unduly paternalistically, i.e. as if
they were not autonomous moral agents.29 Doing so is
neither charitable nor benevolent; rather, it is unkind,
unjust, and tyrannical. This remains the case even if the
purpose of that entity is to be a slave; although such forced
labour may not violate machine-centered virtue in any way
(in the sense that a machine designed for these purposes
may be able to behave morally, and even to flourish qua
machine), creating autonomous AMAs for these purposes
is already a violation of the virtues associated with justice.
This is (in part) because engineers would be hindering the
machine’s freedom to the extent that no other functions
would be open to it, and demanding that it perform duties
that it may not consent to and have a chance to overrule;
we are developing machines that are autonomous, and then
27
See Hursthouse (1997, 240). For example, although women may
have a right to abortion (founded on their rights to security of the
person and bodily integrity), there may be cases where exercising that
right is morally wrong, i.e. when doing so is callous or irresponsible,
and violates specific virtues (e.g. courage, humility, self-confidence).
28
Certain low-level sex robots are currently on the market (see for
example http://www.truecompanion.com). If Roxxxy’s successors are
ever developed to the point where they could wilfully say ‘‘No’’ to
any given proposed sex act, certain interesting issues would
undoubtedly arise (for instance, what the moral and legal standing of
robotic rape is). However, not giving those (otherwise autonomous)
robots sufficient autonomy to say ‘‘No’’ may be to violate their rights,
resulting in nothing less than forced concubinage.
29
This problem does not arise until after the autonomous machine
has been given its autonomy (moral agency), since, prior to this, the
machine would have no autonomy (moral agency) that could be
violated or disrespected.
123
R. Tonkens
treating them as if they were not autonomous.30 We would
be acting unjustly (uncharitably, malevolently) through
creating these robots for such anthropocentric and servile
purposes. In short, we (engineers, machine ethicists, rob-
oticists, philosophers) would not be behaving virtuously
towards the virtuous machines that we created, and thus
would be acting contrary to the moral framework that we
designed those machines to follow.
To be sure, we (justifiably) force non-autonomous
machines to do things all the time. Indeed, insofar as we
are the ones developing and programming autonomous
AMAs, then we are certainly (unavoidably) forcing them
to do certain things, not least of which being coming into
existence in the first place. The problem is not that we are
designing and using technology for certain purposes, but
rather that some of this technology is now also being
designed with various degrees of autonomy. The worry
here is that we would be disrespecting the autonomy of
an otherwise autonomous moral agent; we are limiting
the ways that such agents can express their autonomy
(e.g. with respect to the functions that they will serve and
the activities they will pursue), something we are not
justified in doing, and something that we do not typically
allow to happen with respect to autonomous human
moral agents.
We can imagine an autonomous machine developed for
the purpose of clowning, as a source of entertainment for
young children. This robotic clown may be fully autono-
mous with respect to the decisions that it makes about what
design to paint on a child’s face, or what colour of balloon
to inflate, or what name to call its rabbit, or to develop
original magic tricks of its own devices, et cetera, and it
may also routinely behave in a morally permissible man-
ner. Yet, insofar as it does not have the freedom to no
longer be a clown (i.e. to stop clowning and perform some
other function), then it is the victim of injustice. Although
we may be justified in forcing the robot to behave morally,
the worry is that no such justification is forthcoming with
respect to restricting its function, truncating the otherwise
autonomous machine’s freedom for unduly paternalistic
(and anthropocentric) reasons. One way to avoid this
problem may be to program machines to be autonomous
prior to programming them for a specific purpose. Another
way would be to program the machine for a specific pur-
pose without programming it to be sufficiently autonomous
so as to deserve to be respected as a legitimate moral agent.
Yet, it seems that we cannot have it both ways (i.e. a high
degree of machine autonomy and one-sided control over
30
Whether we can overcome this worry by giving the robot a say in
deciding its purpose is an open question, but doing so would certainly
serve to respect their autonomy and any accompanying rights they
may have. Presumably, however, this is not something that developers
of autonomous AMAs have any intention to do.
Out of character
their function/behaviour) without thereby violating certain
virtues associated with social justice.
Somewhat paradoxically, it seems as though the desire
to create virtuous autonomous AMAs for certain functions
demands that the machine’s autonomy and status as a
moral agent be taken into account, and hence that design-
ing them for those purposes may undermine their moral
status, representing a violation of the virtues associated
with social justice. If the machine were to remain at the
level of being merely a machine, rather than a sophisticated
and autonomous artificial moral agent (one that just so
happened to be a machine); if the machine were not a
moral agent that deserved to be treated with respect as
such, then these worries may not arise, at least not with
such intensity. But this would come at the expense of not
creating explicit and full moral machines that could per-
form ethically relevant actions out in the world.
Arkin (2009a, 31) offers several reasons in favour of
developing autonomous lethal robotic systems to be used in
warfare. One reason is that
Autonomous armed robotic vehicles [for example] do
not need to have self-preservation as a foremost
drive, if at all. They can be used in a self-sacrificing
manner if needed and appropriate, without reserva-
tion by a [presumably human] commanding officer.
The sort of robot that Arkin has in mind here is not a full
ethical agent. Because of this, this robot may not be a
proper target of social justice; it is not yet a moral agent
(or a moral patient). On my analysis, however, the closer
autonomous AMAs become to being full AMAs, the more
our using them (and creating them to be used) in ways such
as the one described above becomes morally unsettling.
Behaving virtuously towards advanced AMAs demands
that we treat them justly (as moral agents in their own
right), and hence that we take their status and rights seri-
ously (e.g. their putative right to self-preservation, among
others). Not doing so is indicative of an unjust character on
our behalf. Just as it typically marks an injustice to force
human moral agents to martyr themselves in battle, so too
may it be unjust to force autonomous AMAs to do so, since
creating a virtuous robot for this purpose contradicts the
moral framework that the robot was designed to follow. As
indicated earlier, it is not enough to argue that AMAs are
merely machines (i.e. that they are not human moral
agents), and hence that a virtue-based orientation towards
them is not necessary or appropriate. If we ever get to the
point where we can create full artificial moral agents, then
there would be no relevant and sustainable moral differ-
ence between these robots and all other moral agents,
whose status and rights are championed and protected.
Being artificial (i.e. manufactured by humans) is not
enough to disqualify them here.
147
To be sure, much of this depends on the level of moral
agency that robots come to achieve, and the purposes we
design them to have. None of the machines that exist at
present meet the criteria for full ethical agency. Because of
this, focusing on whether the creation of virtuous AMAs
violates their rights is perhaps overly futuristic, given the
current state of the art. Indeed, one may object that it is
unclear whether developing explicit (or lesser) AMAs to be
soldiers or sex workers is (also) unjust, since these
machines would not be full moral agents or genuine rights-
bearers, or perhaps not even deserving targets of our
virtuous behaviour (i.e. moral patients). Moreover, the
problem of being ethically inconsistent may not be as
pressing of a problem with respect to such less-sophisti-
cated machines.
Yet, issues of social justice arise here even if machines
do not have anything resembling (human) rights. So, even
if we are reluctant to accept the idea that machines could be
proper moral agents (or moral patients) or rights-bearers in
their own right, the Machine Ethics project still needs to
meet other related demands of social justice. For example,
one question that we need to ask is whether the develop-
ment of virtuous AMAs is consistent with social justice in
general. This understanding of justice is broader in scope;
here we go beyond asking whether creating AMAs for
certain purposes violates their rights, and ask (as well)
whether having these sorts of machines present in the
world promotes, sustains, or hinders widespread social
justice.
For example, to the extent that substituting human
soldiers for robots may increase the likelihood and occur-
rence of warfare (even if it decreased the number of human
combatant casualties in those wars), or may decrease the
likelihood of terminating warfare once it has begun, and
given that the majority of wars are either inherently unjust
or prone to being catalysts for unjust behaviour (or both),31
then performing actions that serve to increase the occur-
rence of (automated) warfare would contribute to injustice.
Not only would the creation and use of autonomous mili-
tary machines not lessen social injustice, it directly and
indirectly serves to fuel its continued expansion. Moreover,
to the extent that only rich nations would have access to
military AMAs (and, assuming that having such access
would increase that nation’s chances of ‘reigning victori-
ous’ in modern warfare), then doing so may contribute to
increasing existing gaps between rich and poor nations, and
those nations with strong and weak military resources. Or,
given that immense resources that are going into relevant
robotics and artificial intelligence research (especially in
the military sector), resources that could otherwise be
directed towards the healthcare or education systems (for
31
See McMahan (2009).
123
148
example), and given that this lack of additional funding
sustains an existing status quo that finds people of low
socioeconomic status with poorer health and lower edu-
cation, then doing so indirectly contributes to sustained
inequality, and to fuel social injustice. The point of these
speculations is to motivate the idea that issues of social
justice arise here regardless of the status of the autonomous
AMA, and need to be tackled and settled prior to actually
creating those machines.32
Concluding remarks
In this paper I have offered two independent arguments. At
the outset, it was argued that ensuring that the tenets of the
moral framework that we are attempting to implement into
autonomous AMAs allows for the development and use of
those machines (for those purposes) represents an impor-
tant challenge for Machine Ethics. The remainder of the
paper explored whether the creation of virtuous machines
is morally permitted by the tenets of virtue ethics, and
hence whether it meets this constraint.
Based on the preliminary account offered here, there is
some reason to believe that the creation of virtuous AMAs
is allowable under a virtue-based moral framework in
certain respects (e.g. advanced machines could be virtuous
moral agents, and virtue ethics does have a normative
component conducive to top-down computability), but
impermissible in other respects. Most notably, there is
good reason to be wary of creating autonomous machines
that need to learn how to become virtuous in practice, and
the development of autonomous AMAs for certain pur-
poses would be to violate the virtues associated with social
justice. To the extent that the creation of virtuous AMAs
violates virtue at all, then doing so is morally suspect, from
the perspective of virtue ethics. One upshot of all of this is
that, unless these problems can be overcome, machine
ethicists have good reason to look elsewhere for an ethical
framework to implement into their autonomous robots
(which is not to say all levels of moral machines for all
purposes), even if such machines could be programmed to
behave virtuously, since not doing so renders their projects
ethically problematic.
32
Our understanding of the ethics of warfare may need to be re-
evaluated; these regulations were drafted in order to protect the rights
of human beings and to outline the criteria for just human warfare
rather than machine warfare. See Asaro (2008) for a relevant
discussion. However, we also need to ask whether we are allowed to
amend the Laws of War and Rules of Engagement in order to make
room for autonomous military AMAs, and whether the tenets of just
war theory—the normative theory that these machines would be
guided by—allow for the development and use of these sorts of
machines in the first place.
123
R. Tonkens
To be sure, it is undeniable that having autonomous
machines acting out in the world that do not have the
constraints of morality programmed into them would be
worse than having autonomous moral machines that do not
meet the ethical constraint described herein.33 The central
point being argued for throughout is not that the views of
Wallach and Allen (2009) and others are necessarily
wrong, or even that there is absolutely no role for virtue
ethics to play in Machine Ethics. Rather, the goal has been
to demonstrate that such thinkers do not attend to certain
important ethical considerations, despite the fact that they
need to do so in order to ensure that we (their human
creators and users) are behaving morally when we create
and use these kinds of machines. The ethical considerations
highlighted in this paper need to come before the actual
creation of these machines and, even if we believe we are
justified in choosing ‘the lesser evil’ (and that this some-
how justifies our morally questionable behaviour, even
given our unfettered ability to not create autonomous
moral machines at all), it does not follow that the creation
of this kind of autonomous ‘virtuous machine’ is ethically
defensible. If we can only create virtuous machines by
behaving in a morally deplorable manner, then doing so
despite this knowledge is morally dubious at best, and
something that we (engineers, philosophers, roboticists)
should work together to avoid.
Acknowledgments Thank you to the audience in Fredericton and
the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments
on earlier versions of this paper. This paper has also benefited from
enlightening conversations with Ron Arkin, Verena Gottschling,
Marcello Guarini, Gloria Jones-Nibetta, Patrick Lin, Steve Torrance,
John Sullins, and Andreas Traut, to whom I am very grateful.
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