To untether the behaviour of programs in the long run will also in certain frameworks and certain necessary decisions, could have serious consequences for human beings. Programs could lose their character as tools and instead become autonomously active participants. In the robots existing today, humans must still intervene by controlling, steering, supervising, etc., but the degree of automization is growing. Thus, it raises the responsibility question for the behaviour of robots and AI expert systems, as well as for that of their technical designers and users.

To untether the behaviour of programs in the long run will also in certain frameworks and certain necessary decisions, could have serious consequences for human beings. Programs could lose their character as tools and instead become autonomously active participants. In the robots existing today, humans must still intervene by controlling, steering, supervising, etc., but the degree of automization is growing. Thus, it raises the responsibility question for the behaviour of robots and AI expert systems, as well as for that of their technical designers and users.

THE US Army is deploying armed robots in Iraq that are capable of breaking Asmov’s first law that they should not harm a human.

“There’s definitely been a palpable upswing in methods, competence and boldness,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is president-elect of the American Association for
Artificial Intelligence. “At conferences you are hearing the phrase
‘human-level A.I.,’ and people are saying that without blushing.”