mlsanityData to 13 Oct 2026

A Voting-Based System for Ethical Decision Making

arXiv 1709.06692 ↗First posted 20 Sep 2017cs.AI cs.CY cs.GTcited by 55

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

We present a general approach to automating ethical decisions, drawing on machine learning and computational social choice. In a nutshell, we propose to learn a model of societal preferences, and, when faced with a specific ethical dilemma at runtime, efficiently aggregate those preferences to identify a desirable choice. We provide a concrete algorithm that instantiates our approach; some of its crucial steps are informed by a new theory of swap-dominance efficient voting rules. Finally, we implement and evaluate a system for ethical decision making in the autonomous vehicle domain, using preference data collected from 1.3 million people through the Moral Machine website.

Key facts. Cited by 55 papers in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2017.

Builds on

No reference list yet.

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 13 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2018: 1; 2019: 0; 2020: 0; 2021: 2; 2022: 7; 2023: 12; 2024: 14; 2025: 10; 2026: 9.

55 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2023Open Problems and Fundamental Limitations of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 751
  2. 2024Social Choice Should Guide AI Alignment in Dealing with Diverse Human Feedbackcited by 100
  3. 2023The Participatory Turn in AI Design: Theoretical Foundations and the Current State of Practicecited by 87
  4. 2024Axioms for AI Alignment from Human Feedbackcited by 52
  5. 2023Generative Social Choicecited by 43
  6. 2023AI Alignment and Social Choice: Fundamental Limitations and Policy Implicationscited by 35
  7. 2023Moral Machine or Tyranny of the Majority?cited by 22
  8. 2023Proportional Aggregation of Preferences for Sequential Decision Makingcited by 17
  9. 2022Imagining new futures beyond predictive systems in child welfare: A qualitative study with impacted stakeholderscited by 15
  10. 2024Preference Poisoning Attacks on Reward Model Learningcited by 14
  11. 2025The Staircase of Ethics: Probing LLM Value Priorities through Multi-Step Induction to Complex Moral Dilemmascited by 13
  12. 2022Metaethical Perspectives on 'Benchmarking' AI Ethicscited by 12
38 more
  1. 2024On Goodhart's law, with an application to value alignmentcited by 9
  2. 2025Can AI Model the Complexities of Human Moral Decision-Making? A Qualitative Study of Kidney Allocation Decisionscited by 9
  3. 2023Designing Fiduciary Artificial Intelligencecited by 8
  4. 2024Learning Linear Utility Functions From Pairwise Comparison Queriescited by 7
  5. 2024On the Pros and Cons of Active Learning for Moral Preference Elicitationcited by 7
  6. 2024On The Stability of Moral Preferences: A Problem with Computational Elicitation Methodscited by 7
  7. 2025From Multi-Agent Systems and the Semantic Web to Agentic AI: A Unified Narrative of the Web of Agentscited by 7
  8. 2022Moral Dilemmas for Moral Machinescited by 6
  9. 2025Moral Change or Noise? On Problems of Aligning AI With Temporally Unstable Human Feedbackcited by 6
  10. 2022When Is It Acceptable to Break the Rules? Knowledge Representation of Moral Judgement Based on Empirical Datacited by 5
  11. 2024Learning How to Vote with Principles: Axiomatic Insights Into the Collective Decisions of Neural Networkscited by 5
  12. 2022Human-centered mechanism design with Democratic AIcited by 3
  13. 2022Artificial virtuous agents in a multiagent tragedy of the commonscited by 3
  14. 2023Measuring Value Alignmentcited by 3
  15. 2025Towards Cognitively-Faithful Decision-Making Models to Improve AI Alignmentcited by 3
  16. 2021Egalitarian Judgment Aggregationcited by 2
  17. 2023If our aim is to build morality into an artificial agent, how might we begin to go about doing so?cited by 2
  18. 2026MoralityGym: A Benchmark for Evaluating Hierarchical Moral Alignment in Sequential Decision-Making Agentscited by 2
  19. 2021Strategyproof Learning: Building Trustworthy User-Generated Datasetscited by 1
  20. 2024Mapping the Potential of Explainable AI for Fairness Along the AI Lifecyclecited by 1
  21. 2024Intuitions of Compromise: Utilitarianism vs. Contractualismcited by 1
  22. 2024Democratizing Reward Design for Personal and Representative Value-Alignmentcited by 1
  23. 2025Generalizing while preserving monotonicity in comparison-based preference learning modelscited by 1
  24. 2025Weighted Assumption Based Argumentation to reason about ethical principles and actionscited by 1
  25. 2026Linear Social Choice with Few Queries: A Moment-Based Approachcited by 1
  26. 2026The End Justifies the Mean: A Linear Ranking Rule for Proportional Sequential Decisionscited by 1
  27. 2018A Roadmap for Robust End-to-End Alignmentcited by 0
  28. 2022Finding Common Ground for Incoherent Horn Expressionscited by 0
  29. 2023Deep Learning and Ethicscited by 0
  30. 2023A Case for AI Safety via Lawcited by 0
  31. 2023Dynamic value alignment through preference aggregation of multiple objectivescited by 0
  32. 2024AI, Pluralism, and (Social) Compensationcited by 0
  33. 2024Why should we ever automate moral decision making?cited by 0
  34. 2024Virtue Ethics For Ethically Tunable Robotic Assistantscited by 0
  35. 2025A Case for Specialisation in Non-Human Entitiescited by 0
  36. 2025On Monotonicity in AI Alignmentcited by 0
  37. 2025Coordination Requires Simplification: Thermodynamic Bounds on Multi-Objective Compromise in Natural and Artificial Intelligencecited by 0
  38. 2026AI of the People, by the People, for the People: A Social Choice Approach to Collective Control of Artificial Intelligencecited by 0

50 most cited of 55 All 55 (JSON)