I came across an interesting article out of Science News for Students on morals entitled, “Teaching robots right from wrong.”
I rarely discuss moral (right vs. wrong) choices because I enjoy the laws of nature. I made an exception here because of the moral choice needs arising from mechanical or robotic systems.
There are two questions that arise:
- Evolution cannot explain where morality comes from since creatures are often “misbehaving” (i.e. steeling, lusting, enslaving, and fighting over possessing a female)? Yes, I have heard that morals help humans operate a civilization but that does not explain this issue to my understanding for various reasons not mentioned herein.
- Who determines what is right, wrong, good, bad, safe, unsafe, dangerous, etc.?
Because robots lack ethic knowledge, the article states, “So robot developers are turning to philosophy. Called ethics, it’s a field in which people study differences between right and wrong. And with it, they are starting to develop robots that can make basic ethical decisions.”
But the article goes on and states that ethics is the easy part of the programing, “In some cases, the ethical choice is the easy part of a robot’s programming. The hard part is getting the robot to notice a problem or danger.“
Recognizing danger and the ability to predict the future are challenging.
I enjoyed reading the article because it brought out some interesting things that humans do and how different we are from animals. If you believe in the theory of evolution, these differences begs the question, what mechanisms of natural selection cause humans to excel? And then the follow up question, is evolution a theory?
So, after reading this blog post, you may be asking, Is Evolution A Theory? The answer is simple, it cannot be a valid theory because it is incompatible with the Laws of Nature. Go to our Start Here page and begin examining the scientific evidence on why the theory of evolution is failed and should be rejected as a scientific theory.