Intending to err: the ethical challenge of lethal, autonomous systems

Current precursors in the development of lethal, autonomous systems (LAS) point to the use of biometric devices for assessing, identifying, and verifying targets. The inclusion of biometric devices entails the use of a probabilistic matching program that requires the deliberate targeting of noncombatants as a statistically necessary function of the system. While the tactical employment of the LAS may be justified on the grounds that the deliberate killing of a smaller number of noncombatants is better than the accidental killing of a larger number, it may nonetheless contravene a reemerging conception of right intention. Originally framed by Augustine of Hippo, this lesser-known formulation has served as the foundation for chivalric code, canon law, jus in bello criteria, and the law of armed conflict. Thus it serves as a viable measure to determine whether the use of lethal autonomy would accord with these other laws and principles. Specifically, examinations of the LAS through the lenses of collateral damage, the principle of double effect, and the principle of proportionality, reveal the need for more attention to be paid to the moral issues now, so that the promise of this emerging technology??that it will perform better than human beings??might actually come to pass.     

Computer systems: Moral entities but not moral agents

After discussing the distinction between artifacts and natural entities, and the distinction between artifacts and technology, the conditions of the traditional account of moral agency are identified. While computer system behavior meets four of the five conditions, it does not and cannot meet a key condition. Computer systems do not have mental states, and even if they could be construed as having mental states, they do not have intendings to act, which arise from an agent’s freedom. On the other hand, computer systems have intentionality, and because of this, they should not be dismissed from the realm of morality in the same way that natural objects are dismissed. Natural objects behave from necessity; computer systems and other artifacts behave from necessity after they are created and deployed, but, unlike natural objects, they are intentionally created and deployed. Failure to recognize the intentionality of computer systems and their connection to human intentionality and action hides the moral character of computer systems. Computer systems are components in human moral action. When humans act with artifacts, their actions are constituted by the intentionality and efficacy of the artifact which, in turn, has been constituted by the intentionality and efficacy of the artifact designer. All three components – artifact designer, artifact, and artifact user – are at work when there is an action and all three should be the focus of moral evaluation.     

Application of dimensional reasoning to thermal systems

A variant of dimensional analysis, called the method of synthesis, is described and its application to thermal systems is discussed. The method focuses attention on the development of a dimensional equation, which is composed of terms having linear dimensions, as an interim stage in the formation of non-dimensional relationships. It is demonstrated that this approach provides considerably greater flexibility than conventionaL methods of analysis and that convenient solutions may be quickly, and easily, generated.     

Integrating robot ethics and machine morality: the study and design of moral competence in robots

Robot ethics encompasses ethical questions about how humans should design, deploy, and treat robots; machine morality encompasses questions about what moral capacities a robot should have and how these capacities could be computationally implemented. Publications on both of these topics have doubled twice in the past 10 years but have often remained separate from one another. In an attempt to better integrate the two, I offer a framework for what a morally competent robot would look like (normally considered machine morality) and discuss a number of ethical questions about the design, use, and treatment of such moral robots in society (normally considered robot ethics). Instead of searching for a fixed set of criteria of a robot’s moral competence I identify the multiple elements that make up human moral competence and probe the possibility of designing robots that have one or more of these human elements, which include: moral vocabulary; a system of norms; moral cognition and affect; moral decision making and action; moral communication. Juxtaposing empirical research, philosophical debates, and computational challenges, this article adopts an optimistic perspective: if robotic design truly commits to building morally competent robots, then those robots could be trustworthy and productive partners, caretakers, educators, and members of the human community. Moral competence does not resolve all ethical concerns over robots in society, but it may be a prerequisite to resolve at least some of them.     

Network-based leader-following formation control of second-order autonomous unmanned systems

This article investigates two kinds of leader-following formation control problems of second-order autonomous unmanned systems under directed topology, that are, the cases with constant velocity and time-varying velocity for the leader. First, the kinematical equation of autonomous unmanned systems is established according to some real scenarios. Second, by assuming the velocity of the leader is constant, a sufficient condition ensuring the formation control of autonomous unmanned systems is derived and some control parameters are suitably designed. Third, it is assumed that the velocity of leader is time-varying, and the formation controller with two parts is designed. The first part is intended to form the desired formation of all followers and the second part aims to reach the consensus of velocity. Some simulation examples are finally presented to verify the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.     

浅析公路排水系统的设计

随着西部大开发国家对西部交通跨越式的大力支持,尤其对西藏交通的大力投入,公路等级逐渐提高,早期修建的低等级公路逐步改建成更高等级的公路。以前修建的公路95%受经济和交通发展的制约,等级低,弯多路窄,抗自然的能力极其脆弱。更谈不上设置完善的排水系统。就国道318线日喀则至拉孜段全线149.8KM的三级砂石路改建成二级沥青砼路的设计施工过程来谈,沿线由于季节性暴雨冲刷的影响,全线25处大中型泥石流冲沟直接顶冲路基,未设置任何排水设施;多处涵洞因孔径小,泄洪能力不足而存在涵台开裂、断板等情况;局部沿河路基无排导设施,雨季洪水顶冲路基造成多处水毁;全线公路两边边沟和排水沟极不完善。究其主要原因是水,没有完善的排水系统。本文结合该项目为例,论述公路排水系统,以供公路设计与施工的同仁参考。     

Technology and moral change: the transformation of truth and trust

Ethics and Information Technology - Today humanity is in the midst of the massive expansion of new and fundamental technology, represented by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The...     

医院住院管理信息系统的分析与设计

结合当前医院信息化管理进程,对医院的业务系统进行深入分析研究,归纳医院住院管理系统的业务流程,提出医院住院系统的设计思想,从功能模块、关键技术等角度给出医院住院系统的具体实现。     

发动机冷起动测试系统设计与开发

通过对发动机冷起动参数同步测试的软件硬件开发,完成对发动机冷起动的电压、电流、发动机转速、进气温度、冷却液温度、机油温度等参数的同步测试,开发出发动机冷起动测试系统。     

信息系统通用用户安全管理设计与实现

在中大型信息系统中都要进行用户管理以及用户权限管理,本文将给出设计通用用户安全管理设计思路,并给出设计成功的关键流程及应用实例。     

虚拟类比推理的研究

本文从虚拟现实的角度,提出了虚拟类比推理的四个概念:类比原型、虚拟类比建模、虚拟类比属性和虚拟建构推理。并建立了一个虚拟类比推理模型。     

Planning and design of on-line systems for the ultimate user of biomedical information

Following a general discussion on the philosophy and design of information systems, with particular attention to the definition, needs and psychology of the ultimate user of systems providing on-line access to biomedical information, the role of the documentalist, the differences between document retrieval and true information retrieval and the operational characteristics of on-line systems which affect their cost and hence their design and acceptability, the authors make some tentative predictions as to the future demand for such information retrieval services and their probable organizational form. A brief report is then presented on the principal findings and conclusions of a user's study of the Excerpta Medica system, the key features and history of which are briefly described. Based on the conclusions of this study, particularly as regards the complexity of the average search question, the role of the search formulators in determining the results of computer searching, the importance of secondary concepts for retrieval and the optimal level of specificity of a computer thesaurus, some of the changes in the Excerpta Medica system which are in the planning stage and will be incorporated into the system's Mark II version are outlined, as are the principal features of the two systems currently offering on-line access to the Excerpta Medica database in Western Germany and the U.S.A. Finally, attention is given to the planned partial hierarchic structuring of the Excerpta Medica thesaurus (Malimet), a project which is to be based largely on frequency counts of the existing database and the elimination of over-specific terms by posting under broader concepts. The results of some of the initial steps in this direction (i.e. frequency counts of portions of the database and the structuring of some of the terms used in the cancer field) are presented by way of illustration.     

Fault-tolerant safe control design of switched and interconnected nonlinear systems

This paper provides novel fault-tolerant safe control (FTSC) strategies for switched and interconnected nonlinear systems. With several switching and interconnection situations considered, the proposed corresponding strategies ensure that the state never enters the unsafe set and asymptotically converges to the origin in the presence of faults. This relies on a proposed concept named “fault-tolerant control Lyapunov-Barrier functions (FTCLBF)”. Two practical examples are taken to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Robust observer design by sign-stability for the monitoring of population systems

Monitoring problem in population ecology can be formalized as observer design for the population system in question: Supposing that we observe only certain species considered indicators, we want to recover or estimate the whole state process of the population system, where the state vector is usually composed from the biomasses of the single populations. In the present paper, for stably coexisting population systems, a new approach to the design of the corresponding observer system is proposed which, from the knowledge of the observed indicator(s), estimates the state process with exponential convergence. In the usual observer design, an auxiliary matrix, the so-called gain matrix must be found that guarantees the mentioned exponential convergence. The novelty is in that due to the required sign-stability (or qualitative stability) of the interaction pattern, the designed observer system (i.e. the gain matrix) is robust against quantitative changes in the inter- and intra-specific interactions. (Here the interaction pattern is described by a matrix having the signs as entries, indicating the quality of the interactions within and between the considered species.) In other words, under sign-stability conditions, in the observer design the same gain matrix can be used even if, due to environmental changes, the intensities of certain interactions suffer a quantitative change in the meanwhile. The requirement of sign-stability of the interaction pattern can be considered rather natural, since in a stably coexisting population system, it means for example that a predator–prey relation does not change into a prey–predator interaction, and interactions neither appear nor disappear within the system. Our approach to robust observer design is illustrated on model population systems, such as trophic chains of type resource-producer-primary consumer-secondary consumer and Lotka–Volterra system with vertical structure. For the latter system a Lyapunov function is also constructed that guarantees the global asymptotic stability of the positive equilibrium of the considered model.