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Evaluating computational models of ethics for autonomous decision making

Evaluating computational models of ethics for autonomous decision making
Evaluating computational models of ethics for autonomous decision making
Computational models for ethical autonomy, are crucial for building trustworthy autonomous systems. While different paradigms of ethical autonomy are pursued, comparing and contrasting these paradigms remains a challenge. In this work, we present SPECTRA (Strategic Protocol Evaluation and Configuration Testbed for Responsible Autonomy) a general purpose multi-agent, message-passing framework on top of which, different models of computational ethics can be implemented. The paper also presents our implementation of four paradigms of ethics on this framework– deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics and a recently proposed paradigm called computational transcendence. We observe that although agents have the same goal, differences in their underlying paradigm of ethics have a significant impact on the outcomes for individual agents as well as on the system as a whole. We also simulate a mixed population of agents following different paradigms of ethics and study the emergent properties of the system.
2730-5961
Chhabra, Janvi
e88c156f-06c9-43e6-9f17-5a8ca8423461
Sama, Karthik
0f2edaf0-2a5b-4b75-9734-7fcfd45dcb70
Deshmukh, Jayati
5903b0c1-b4d1-4fbf-b687-610d4fde3990
Srinivasa, Srinath
b4e35d32-beae-4c6e-a4f8-3ee56e75d648
Chhabra, Janvi
e88c156f-06c9-43e6-9f17-5a8ca8423461
Sama, Karthik
0f2edaf0-2a5b-4b75-9734-7fcfd45dcb70
Deshmukh, Jayati
5903b0c1-b4d1-4fbf-b687-610d4fde3990
Srinivasa, Srinath
b4e35d32-beae-4c6e-a4f8-3ee56e75d648

Chhabra, Janvi, Sama, Karthik, Deshmukh, Jayati and Srinivasa, Srinath (2024) Evaluating computational models of ethics for autonomous decision making. AI and Ethics. (doi:10.1007/s43681-024-00532-4).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Computational models for ethical autonomy, are crucial for building trustworthy autonomous systems. While different paradigms of ethical autonomy are pursued, comparing and contrasting these paradigms remains a challenge. In this work, we present SPECTRA (Strategic Protocol Evaluation and Configuration Testbed for Responsible Autonomy) a general purpose multi-agent, message-passing framework on top of which, different models of computational ethics can be implemented. The paper also presents our implementation of four paradigms of ethics on this framework– deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics and a recently proposed paradigm called computational transcendence. We observe that although agents have the same goal, differences in their underlying paradigm of ethics have a significant impact on the outcomes for individual agents as well as on the system as a whole. We also simulate a mixed population of agents following different paradigms of ethics and study the emergent properties of the system.

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Accepted/In Press date: 17 July 2024
Published date: 8 August 2024

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 499364
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/499364
ISSN: 2730-5961
PURE UUID: 32537bf8-b928-4830-a011-0e32e549d650
ORCID for Jayati Deshmukh: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1144-2635

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Date deposited: 18 Mar 2025 17:32
Last modified: 21 Aug 2025 05:12

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Contributors

Author: Janvi Chhabra
Author: Karthik Sama
Author: Jayati Deshmukh ORCID iD
Author: Srinath Srinivasa

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