IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023 - 69

right choices? " and, " Could robots ever be full ethical
agents? " is provided by Sharkey [38], with the
ultimate aim being to prescribe a response to the
prospect of using robots that routinely interact with
people. Job loss is not part of the analysis; the work
is concerned only with the direct effects of robots on
people. Examples include robots used in wartime or
as teachers. Two possible prescriptions are weighed:
either to design " ethical " robots or limit robot use.
Her judgment is in favor of the latter, that the proper
course is to " identify those situations in which
robots should not be deployed, and the social roles
that they should not be given " [38]. This resonates
with the advice from Danaher [25], [29], [30] mentioned
above.
Coeckelberge gauges whether or not robots
should be used to replace human labor by examining
the dependence we would have on them. In
his analysis, this dependence is bad because it obsolesces
" know-how, " or the skills related to mixing
work with nature. The result is that adding job-replacing
technology to a society increases the alienation
of its people from physical reality. He weighs
this alienation against the pecuniary gains known
to come from automation (ignoring the economic
downside) and concludes that we should work to
" make tools that empower people rather than making
them dependent " [39].
When Loi [13] judges the matter of robotic job
displacement, he does count job polarization and
reductions in employment and wages against the
practice. Most of his effort goes into demonstrating
that this technology has an overall negative effect
on workers' standard of living. After establishing that
position, he takes it as a given fact that people, therefore,
have a duty to " [exercise] caution in the introduction
of such technologies. " He goes on to state,
though, that roboticists have no individual responsibilities
to curtail their development of job-replacing
technology since such well-meaning actions would
likely not make much difference [13]. He presents
this conclusion with little analysis and it possibly
contradicts major ethical theories described in the
next section.
The work on technological unemployment in the
field of engineering ethics can be summarized as
follows.
* Numerous authors advocate legislative changes
(most frequently, a universal basic income) to
March 2023
ameliorate the economic effects of dwindling
employment opportunities.
* Axiological concerns are addressed with prescriptions
for business managers to use a new model
of corporate governance and for roboticists to
develop technology for complementing, instead
of replacing, human abilities.
The following two questions for engineers and
roboticists, therefore, remain:
* Given the current economic situation, is it right to
develop new job-replacing technology?
* Is it right (considering either the economic or axiological
standpoint) to apply existing technologies
to job automation?
Analysis
The theories of ethics that have had the most influence
on Western philosophy are virtue ethics, deontology,
and utilitarianism. This section introduces
each in turn, for the benefit of a reader unfamiliar
with them, and applies them to the roboticist's work.
Aristotelian virtue ethics
In ancient Greece, Aristotle taught many subjects,
and one was ethics. Most of Aristotle's teaching on
this subject is collected in what is known as the Nicomachean
Ethics [40]. His major concern therein is
how a person can live a flourishing life. He wrote
that the statesman who has this ability to live well
will naturally apply it to governance and thus benefit
the citizenry. How might the aim of human flourishing
in a roboticist positively affect her compatriots?
Before addressing this question, it is necessary to
establish what is meant by flourishing and why Aristotle
deemed it the most worthwhile pursuit. In his
view, a life form is flourishing when it is accomplishing
that for which it was designed. Now, a life form
does many things, but the one it does that no others
can do is that which it was designed for. Aristotle
concludes that the effective use of reason is what is
meant by flourishing in the case of mankind.
He states that using one's reason to achieve moral
excellence is the most pleasing object one can find,
and so a person is said to be living well when she
loves what is right and thus habitually employs her
reason to achieve good moral outcomes. He lists
some areas in which this can be applied, and they
are known as virtues. A few relevant to the present
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