SIENNA D4.4: Ethical Analysis of AI and Robotics Technologies

This SIENNA deliverable offers a broad ethical analysis of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technologies. Its primary aims have been to comprehensively identify and analyse the present and potential future ethical issues in relation to: (1) the AI and robotics subfields, techniques, approaches and methods; (2) their physical technological products and procedures that are designed for practical applications; and (3) the particular uses and applications of these products and procedures. In conducting the ethical analysis, we strove to provide ample clarification, details about nuances, and contextualisation of the ethical issues that were identified, while avoiding the making of moral judgments and proposing of solutions to these issues.

A secondary aim of this report has been to convey the results of SIENNA’s “country studies” of the national academic and popular media debate on the ethical issues in AI and robotics in twelve different EU and non-EU countries, highlighting the similarities and differences between these countries. While these country study results have only formed a minor contribution to the overall identification and analysis of the ethical issues in this report, they are expected to play a larger role in future SIENNA deliverables.

This deliverable also provides an overview of the history and state of the art of the academic debate on ethics of AI and robot ethics, and an overview of the current institutional support of these fields.