A Study of Machine Ethics in Human-Artificial Intelligence Interactions

Abstract

This study evaluates people’s attitude and preferences toward human-machine interaction from a machine ethics perspective. An interview was first conducted with 30 participants to gather ideas and concerns about future AI technology. Then a survey was conducted with 103 participants to collect quantitative data, and an in-depth interview held with 30 participants to support and provide insights to the questionnaire results. It revealed that severity, time and relativity have significant impacts on people’s choices over automation level, decision-making approach, and responsibility allocation. Either monitored control, consensual control, or both, were the selected as the most preferred automation levels in the different scenarios as opposed to manual control and full automation. The results of this study indicated that AI technology should be adaptively designed to suit specific situations with different combinations of influence factors.