ITC506 201960 Assessment 4: Applying Ethical Theory to Robot Warriors

This report, submitted by a student from Charles Sturt University, analyzes the ethical implications of robot warriors in warfare. The report, prepared for the ITC506 course, begins with an introduction to the topic and then delves into the application of various ethical theories, including Utilitarianism, Deontology, Virtue Theory, and Contract Theory, to the use of robot warriors. The analysis examines the potential benefits and drawbacks of employing robots in combat, considering factors such as combat effectiveness, human casualties, and the moral implications of autonomous decision-making in life-or-death situations. The report references relevant literature to support its arguments. The report concludes with a summary of the findings and recommendations based on the ethical frameworks discussed, ultimately aiming to provide a well-reasoned perspective on the complex ethical issues surrounding the deployment of robot warriors.

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MATHS, Charles Sturt University
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ITC506 201960 Assessment 4: Applying Ethical Theory
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1. Introduction
The report represents about the robot warrior whether it is beneficial for the society or not. In
the present world, with the growth of technology, various kinds of technologies are developed
(Dominguez, Hassan & Crespo, 2017). With the help of new technology, the robot warrior or
army robot are developed for the dangerous case of missions like crawling via waves or street
urban war etc. These robot warriors help to decrease the human casualties if they are used
properly in the wars. In the case of dangerous mission, they behave as the force multiplier. In
Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and other countries have been made various kinds of combat drones as
well as ground robots with the help of artificial intelligence for different cases of wars (Hawkes,
et al., 2017). Nowadays, the most powerful military team in the world are generating various
kinds of intelligent weapons which are controlled by human beings by pulling the trigger button.
The main focus of this following is to develop this article based on various ethical theories such
as Utilitarianism, Contract, Deontology as well as Virtue Theory.
2. Analysis Applying Ethical Theories
2.1. Utilitarianism Theory
The Utilitarianism theory is one kind of ethical theory belong in the teleological normative
theories. Jeremy Bentham had developed this ethical theory. It involves the right as well as
wrong outcomes depending on one particular actions. The main scope of this theory is to take
the amount of good pleasure of one’s action than the other bad pain. It creates an important
section in consequentialism that is related to an individual actions (Lopez et al., 2017). According
to the theory, if the individual behaviour related to more good outcomes than the bad outcomes
then the behaviour considers as ethically right. As per to this ethical theory, it increases more
happiness than the sufferings.
According to the Bentham’s theory, it evaluates that the theory is related to the pleasure as well
as the pain of hum behaviour. It is related to the approval or disapproval of the outcomes
related to the pleasure as well as pain. This theory also represents the equality of the pleasure
and pain (Lunt, 2018). This theory states that the pleasure as well as pain which have the
capability of quantification.
In the case of wars, this theory helps to increase the combat effectiveness. The robot warrior are
mainly designed for handling various kinds of wars to maximize the combat effectiveness. In this
case, it needs to maximise the combat effectiveness, because it helps to increase the happiness
in the world. So, it has been stated that robot soldiers are necessary for the wars because they
have no hesitation to kill the enemies (Meizhen&Zhaoming, 2016). The robot warriors helps to
increase the lifesaving which is again related to the happiness of the world.
According to the Utilitarianism theory, it achieves the highest amount of happiness and it is the
core idea of this ethical theory. Robot warriors helps to increase this happiness among the
world. Because they help to diminish the enemies as well as attacks. Robot warriors are helpful
as because they are based on artificial intelligence which relates to the decrement of human
causalities because they are capable to attack as per the dangerous cases of the war (Osumi,
2014). The robot soldiers are beneficial for the world because it increases the happiness of the
world. With the help of robot soldiers, people can feel safe in their daily lives. As because, they
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are related to the intelligent machines so it saves the human efforts as well as the timing and
also increases for viewing the exact target.
2.2. Deontology Theory
The deontology theory is one kind of normative ethical theory that establishes the relationship
of duty as well as morality as per the human actions. Generally, the word deontology is derived
from the Greek word “deon” which means the duty and “logos” that means science. According
to the deontology theory, the action may be considered as the good in a moral way if the
characteristics of the action are good (Park et al., 2016). Because the good action depends on
only the characteristics of the actions not the outcomes of the action. On the other hand, it is
the opposite of the consequentialism theory. Because the consequentialism theory evaluates
the basic rules of morality what actually depends on the individual actions. But, on the other
side, the deontology theories represents the view of formalistic which is the core part of the
action based on some law as well as rule. According to this ethical theory, this theory is divided
into four theories such as Kantianism theory, Divine command theory, Contemporary theory,
Deontology and consequentialism etc.
In the case of war, the war is necessary to bring back the happiness of the country among the
world (Peterson et al., 2019). Many soldiers involve in this war to increase the happiness as well
as the safety. The soldiers haver the responsible to increase the safety of the country because
they fight for the country and kill the enemies. But if it comes in the morality, it is not ethically
correct to kill any other persons whatever they are related to the enemies. But it needs to dine
for the safety of the country. In that cases, the robot soldiers are responsible to do this work.
Because due to the artificial soldier, they have no emotions that can distract to kill the enemies.
The robot soldiers are sent to the difficult places where the human beings cannot go for fighting.
This robot soldiers serves the role of the human beings without losing any human’s life. Robot
warriors take place in the section of life savings. They can do the same work as any human can
do.
2.3. Virtue Theory
The virtue theory is one of the important ethical theory in ethics. It also belongs in the normative
ethical theory (Sathiyanarayanan et al., 2014). This theory represents the characteristics of the
human beings, not depends on the consequences of the human actions. It relates to the
development of the habits of human beings such honesty, courage as well as wisdom etc.
According to this theory, it offers the description related to the good things as well as the bad
things of a person (Soans et al., 2017). According to the Aristotle’s list of virtues, such virtues are
as courage, Temperance, Liberality, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Proper ambition, Truthfulness,
Modesty etc.
According to the virtue theory, Robot soldiers are morally correct in the case of ethics.
Because they are not harmful fir the human beings. They are the replacement of human and
play as a role of soldier to protect the country as well as the world. The robot may not be injured
at any time because they are able to cure from the injuries. The robot warriors are helpful for
increasing the safety all over the world. They help to save many soldiers life and they can be sent
by human beings at the difficult places in the battlefield. They are not hesitate to kill any of the
enemies. The robots can take faster decision than the human beings and they reject to carry the
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unethical commands whereas in the case of human soldier, they carry these kind of commands
due to pressure.
2.4. Contract Theory
Among all the ethical theories, contract theory is one kind of ethical theory that evaluates the
technique in which is used for living the people in the society. Thomas Hobbes had developed
this theory that represents the society without the laws to manage the actions in the daily life
(Trovato et al., 2017). It has been stated by Thomas Hobbes, that the society may be considered
as the state of the nature when the society has no rules as well as various kinds of laws. It relates
the liveliness of the human beings in the society in such a harmonic way that begins various
kinds of rules as well as the laws. According to the Virtue theory, each human being must
maintain the general formalities to generate a strong society.
In the case, the robot warriors are beneficial for the world. It depends on the artificial
intelligence. The robot soldiers helps to increase the lifesavings of soldiers. The robot warriors
must maintain the ethics related to the battle field. They are not carrying the unethical
commands in the case of serious conditions. There is no hesitation to kill the enemies in the
characteristics of robot soldiers because they have no emotions whereas human has the
characteristics of emotions.
3. Conclusion
From the above discussion part, the stated matter is that robot warriors are too much helpful for
the battlefield due to the capability of killing the enemies which helps to increase the protection
for the country as well as the world. In fact, the overall designing process of these robot
warriors is occurred with the help of Artificial intelligence so that the human beings can control
these robots. Whatever having different kinds of activities of these robot warriors, the main
discussable part is that they act as a substitute of human soldiers. Due to having the robotic
features, they can crawl in many dangerous places for the battle even where a human cannot do
this (Zhao, Ma & Sun, 2017). Moreover the ability of taking faster decision than the human
beings enlists in their robotic feature. In addition to this, there are also four ethical theories that
reflect with the case of army robot. But sometimes, it may happen that these robot armies are
getting hacked by the opposite party. In that case, it has been observed that there is no hacking
in the case of army soldier. Besides that, it is one of the beneficial points that they have the
capability of shooting the enemies with a high accuracy. So, in the last part, it has been shown
that to provide the protection to the nation, the robot armies are necessary to employ in the
battlefield.
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References
Dominguez, C., Hassan, H., & Crespo, A. (2017). Emotional robot control architecture
implementation using FPGAs. Journal of Systems Architecture, 72, 29-41.
Hawkes, E. W., Blumenschein, L. H., Greer, J. D., & Okamura, A. M. (2017). A soft robot that
navigates its environment through growth. Science Robotics, 2(8), eaan3028.
Lopez, A., Paredes, R., Quiroz, D., Trovato, G., & Cuellar, F. (2017, July). Robotman: A security robot
for human-robot interaction. In 2017 18th International Conference on Advanced Robotics
(ICAR) (pp. 7-12). IEEE.
Lunt, K. (2018). Build your own robot!. AK Peters/CRC Press.
Meizhen, D., &Zhaoming, G. (2016, May). Robot Warriors autonomously employing lethal weapons:
Can they be morally justified?. In 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in
Engineering, Science and Technology (ETHICS) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Osumi, H. (2014). Application of robot technologies to the disaster sites. Report of JSME Research
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Park, C., Kim, J., & Kang, J. H. (2016, March). Robot social skills for enhancing social interaction in
physical training. In 2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot
Interaction (HRI) (pp. 493-494). IEEE.
Peterson, J., Cohen, C., Harrison, P., Novak, J., Tossell, C., & Phillips, E. (2019, April). Ideal Warrior
and Robot Relations: Stress and Empathy's Role in Human-Robot Teaming. In 2019 Systems
and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Sathiyanarayanan, M., Azharuddin, S., Kumar, S., & Khan, G. (2014). Gesture Controlled Robot for
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Soans, R. V., Hegde, A., Singh, C., & Kumar, A. (2017, October). Object tracking robot using adaptive
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Trovato, G., Lopez, A., Paredes, R., & Cuellar, F. (2017). Security and guidance: Two roles for a
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Zhao, F., Ma, Y., & Sun, Y. (2017). Application and standardization trend of maintenance and
inspection robot (MIR) in nuclear power station. DEStech Transactions on Engineering and
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