Rightful Machines and Dilemmas

Abstract

Tn this paper I set out a new Kantian approach to resolving conflicts and dilemmas of obligation for semi-autonomous machine agents such as self-driving cars. First, I argue that efforts to build explicitly moral machine agents should focus on what Kant refers to as duties of right, or justice, rather than on duties of virtue, or ethics. In a society where everyone is morally equal, no one individual or group has the normative authority to unilaterally decide how moral conflicts should be resolved for everyone. Only public institutions to which everyone could consent have the authority to define, enforce, and adjudicate our rights and obligations with respect to one other. Then, I show how the shift from ethics to a standard of justice resolves the conflict of obligations in what is known as the "trolley problem" for rightful machine agents. Finally, I consider how a deontic logic suitable for governing explicitly rightful machines might meet the normative requirements of justice.