# Have a break from making decisions, have a MARS: The Multi-valued Action Reasoning System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.03283 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03283/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Sep 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03346/) (2015)
- [Towards Moral Autonomous Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04741/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Minimum Levels of Interpretability for Artificial Moral Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00660/) (2023)
- [Breaking Bad News in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Medicine: An Exploration of Disclosure and its Ethical Justification using the Hedonic Calculus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01431/) (2022)
- [Developing moral AI to support antimicrobial decision making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06327/) (2022)
- [Establishing Meta-Decision-Making for AI: An Ontology of Relevance, Representation and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00608/) (2022)
- [If our aim is to build morality into an artificial agent, how might we begin to go about doing so?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08295/) (2023)
- [Can a Machine be Conscious? Towards Universal Criteria for Machine Consciousness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15369/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Multi-valued Action Reasoning System (MARS) is an automated value-based ethical decision-making model for artificial agents (AI). Given a set of available actions and an underlying moral paradigm, by employing MARS one can identify the ethically preferred action. It can be used to implement and model different ethical theories, different moral paradigms, as well as combinations of such, in the context of automated practical reasoning and normative decision analysis. It can also be used to model moral dilemmas and discover the moral paradigms that result in the desired outcomes therein. In this paper, we give a condensed description of MARS, explain its uses, and comparatively place it in the existing literature.