Since I published this paper in 2002, it has been cited in several scholarly works and served as required reading for the first course on "machine ethics" (at Yale). The book, Moral Machines (2008), covered most of the same issues with greater detail and less arrogance, and had six more years of scholarship to reference. However, its discussion of my paper could not account for improvements made in subsequent versions. For example, the paper benefited from feedback which showed me that pessimism about the future morality of learning machines is no more justified than pessimism about the future morality of our own children. Therefore, I am republishing the paper as a "knol".
The paper explains why some authorities in relevant fields are concerned that machines will take over the world in the next 10-20 years. It also discusses what we can do to ensure that machines will behave as though instilled with an appreciation for ethics, has implications for human ethics, and may explain why I encourage my kids to figure ethics out for themselves.
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