The Future of Ethical Decisions Made by Computers

Abstract

Moral issues and ethical decisions are usually seen as signs of civilisation. The idea that human beings and, in particular, human judges possess a privilege to judge upon ethical issues is widespread and ubiquitously accepted. However, the current development of disruptive technologies makes the following question acute: can computers outperform the best human judges in the area of moral issues? In this article, we discuss five fundamental problems (called invariants) with respect to the current state of the art. Our conclusion is that within two waves of disruptive developments (each taking, say, 25 years) computers will be on a par with, or even better in, taking ethical decisions than human beings.