SENG/COMP4920 - Second Essay Questions
Term 1, 2023 - UNSW
Word length - 1500w-2000w in total (not including bibliography or footnotes).
Due date - Friday March 31 (Week 7), 18:00.
Please submit your essay via turnitin (details to follow).
Answer one (1) of the following questions:
1. Expound and assess rule-based/Kantian ethics. Analyse the extent to which such an
ethics might be used to design an automated ethics. What do you think that the risks
and opportunities of such an automated ethics might be? Why? Justify your answer with
explicit reference to at least one of the suggested readings in section 1.1 below.
2. Is kicking a robot dog morally wrong, or morally permissible? In your answer, make
explicit detailed reference to virtue ethics. Which answer or answers might virtue ethics
give us? Are any of these answers correct? Why? Justify your answer with explicit
reference to at least one of the suggested readings in section 1.2 below.
3. In his The uselessness of AI ethics (2022), Luke Munn criticises much practice in AI
ethics. Do you think that Munn’s criticism is justified, and that his proposed solutions
are sufficient? Why? Justify your argument with explicit detailed reference to Elettra
Bietti’s From ethics washing to ethics bashing: a view on tech ethics from within moral
philosophy (2020). For further details of these two papers, please see section 1.3 below.
This is the end of your questions. There are no more questions.
Please read on for essay tips, referencing guidelines, UNSW’s plagiarism protocols, and
an important rule with regard to ChatGPT.
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1 Essay writing tips
1.1 For Question 1 above
The first thing that Question 1 is asking you to do is to expound Kantian ethics. ”Expound” is
just a fancy way of asking you describe and explain something in detail.
The second thing that Question 1 is asking you to do is to assess Kantian ethics. So, this is a
great opportunity for you to state what it is that you think about Kantian ethics, why you think
it, and what reasons you have for your reader to agree with you that you are right!
As always, a very useful thing to do here is to anticipate and articulate possible objections to
your point of view, and to then respond to them in detail.
The third thing that Question 1 ask you is just how useful you think a Kantian ethics might
be for automated ethics. Another name for automated ethics is “machine ethics”. Automated
ethics is the automation of ethical/moral decision making. In other words, it is the attempt to
make moral decision making computable. This is just to say that it is that attempt to subsume
moral decision making within a finite mechanical process.
The fourth and fifth things that Question 1 asks you respectively are to give reasons for your
answer to the third thing, and to then argue for and justify these reasons. I am sure that you can
see a pattern here by now :)
Again as always, a very useful thing to do here is to anticipate and articulate possible objec-
tions to your point of view, and to then respond to them in detail.
Here are some readings that will help you with your answer to Question 1. Note that all of
them can be found on Google Scholar (you will need to be inside the UNSW network to access
some of them, so VPN is essential if you are not on campus):
Manna, R. and Nath, R. (2021): Kantian Moral Agency and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,
Problemos vol. 100, pp. 139–151.
Nath, R., and Sahu, V. (2021): The problem of machine ethics in artificial intelligence, AI &
Society, 35:103–111.
Tonkens, R. (2009): A Challenge for Machine Ethics, Minds & Machines (2009) 19:421–438.
Singh, L. (2022): Automated Kantian Ethics: A Faithful Implementation.
Online at https://github.com/lsingh123/automatedkantianethics
1.2 For Question 2 above
The first thing that Question 2 asks you is what you think about the moral status is of kicking a
robot dog. A good answer here would give some space to the considerations that motivate your
answer.
The second thing that Question 2 ask you is to engage in detail with virtue ethics! This is fun,
as there is a lot of great literature out there on this very same topic. Think about it now for just a
moment. Neither utilitarianism nor Kantian ethics give as any obvious reason for why it is that
kicking a robot dog is the wrong thing to do. In spite of this, some people have felt that there is
/something/ wrong with kicking a robot dog. There is some great literature on this topic. The
videos of the Boston Dynamics robot dog ”Spot” being kicked led to a very interesting debate,
and virtue ethics payed a central role in it.
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Again as always, a very useful thing to do here is to anticipate and articulate possible objec-
tions to your point of view, and to then respond to them in detail.
The other things that Question 2 asks you require you to engage with this literature. Here is
the literature. Again, note that all of them can be found on Google Scholar (you will need to
be inside the UNSW network to access some of them, so VPN is essential if you are not on
campus):
Coeckelbergh, M. (2021): How to Use Virtue Ethics for Thinking About the Moral Standing
of Social Robots: A Relational Interpretation in Terms of Practices, Habits, and Performance,
International Journal of Social Robotics, 13:31–40.
Sparrow, S. (2021): Virtue and Vice in Our Relationships with Robots: Is There an Asymmetry
and How Might it be Explained? International Journal of Social Robotics (2021) 13:23–29.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2021): Does kindness towards robots lead to virtue? A reply to Sparrow’s
asymmetry argument, Ethics and Information Technology (2021) 23:649–656.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2021): Should We Treat Teddy Bear 2.0 as a Kantian Dog? Four Argu-
ments for the Indirect Moral Standing of Personal Social Robots, with Implications for Think-
ing About Animals and Humans, Minds and Machines (2021) 31:337–360.
1.3 For Question 3 above
Question 3 makes explicit reference to the two readings that are on webcms for the lecture on
ethics washing. I have combined them there into a single pdf. There is no need for you to look
for extra readings for Question 3. However, if you want to do so, then there is certainly no
prohibition against it!
One thing to do in this case would be to look at the citations in Munn and Bietti’s articles and
follow your interests. Another thing to do would be to look up these two articles on Google
Scholar, and look up more recent papers that have references Munn and Bietti’s articles.
This is how own conducts one’s own research. Question 3 is exciting, but the obvious challenge
is that your essay is due before we cover this material in the lectures! So, this question is for
those of you like to live life on the edge :)
The most important hing to do here is the provide an answer to the question! And to give rea-
sons for your answer of course. Good reasons. Reasons that anticipate and respond to possible
objections.
2 Referencing guidelines
Your essay must follow the Harvard style in-text referencing system as described here:
https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/harvard-referencing
3 Plagiarism rules
It is very, very important that you do not fall afoul of UNSW’s plagiarism rules. You need to
read through and understand all of the following:
https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism
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I cannot over-emphasise the seriousness of UNSW’s plagiarism rules.
4 ChatGPT
I have read through the recent document from UNSW’s Pro-Vice Chancellor on the issue of
ChatGPT. I find that this assessment in SENG/COMP4920 falls under the following rules
for simple editing assistance:
For this assessment task, you may use standard editing and referencing software,
but not Generative AI. You are permitted to use the full capabilities of the standard
software to answer the question (e.g. you may wish to specify particular software
such as Microsoft Office suite, Grammarly, etc.).
If the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT is detected, it will be regarded as
serious academic misconduct and subject to the standard penalties, which may
include 00FL, suspension and exclusion.
Here too, I really cannot over-emphasise just how serious this is.
End of Document.