mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Moral Dilemmas for Moral Machines

arXiv 2203.06152 ↗First posted 11 Mar 2022cs.CY cs.AIcited by 6

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous systems are being developed and deployed in situations that may require some degree of ethical decision-making ability. As a result, research in machine ethics has proliferated in recent years. This work has included using moral dilemmas as validation mechanisms for implementing decision-making algorithms in ethically-loaded situations. Using trolley-style problems in the context of autonomous vehicles as a case study, I argue (1) that this is a misapplication of philosophical thought experiments because (2) it fails to appreciate the purpose of moral dilemmas, and (3) this has potentially catastrophic consequences; however, (4) there are uses of moral dilemmas in machine ethics that are appropriate and the novel situations that arise in a machine-learning context can shed some light on philosophical work in ethics.

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 16 of its 110 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2022.

Builds on

16 of 110 references.

References · 16

  1. 2016End to End Learning for Self-Driving Carscited by 1,000
  2. 2021AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmarkcited by 340
  3. 2017PMLB: A Large Benchmark Suite for Machine Learning Evaluation and Comparisoncited by 139
  4. 2019Artificial Intelligence: the global landscape of ethics guidelinescited by 107
  5. 2020Scruples: A Corpus of Community Ethical Judgments on 32,000 Real-Life Anecdotescited by 100
  6. 2017Imitating Driver Behavior with Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 92
  7. 2017A Voting-Based System for Ethical Decision Makingcited by 55
  8. 2015The social dilemma of autonomous vehiclescited by 47
  9. 2018A Computational Model of Commonsense Moral Decision Makingcited by 13
  10. 2020Landscape of Machine Implemented Ethicscited by 13
  11. 2019Algorithmic decision-making in AVs: Understanding ethical and technical concerns for smart citiescited by 8
  12. 2020The Tragedy of the AI Commonscited by 7
4 more
  1. 2021Est-ce que vous compute? Code-switching, cultural identity, and AIcited by 6
  2. 2019Towards a Framework Combining Machine Ethics and Machine Explainabilitycited by 5
  3. 2017Feature Analysis and Selection for Training an End-to-End Autonomous Vehicle Controller Using the Deep Learning Approachcited by 4
  4. 2019On the Morality of Artificial Intelligencecited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 0; 2024: 1; 2025: 1; 2026: 2.

6 papers.

  1. 2022Metaethical Perspectives on 'Benchmarking' AI Ethicscited by 11
  2. 2024Large-scale moral machine experiment on large language modelscited by 9
  3. 2025Exploring Persona-dependent LLM Alignment for the Moral Machine Experimentcited by 9
  4. 2022The Linguistic Blind Spot of Value-Aligned Agency, Natural and Artificialcited by 1
  5. 2026Normative Common Ground Replication (NormCoRe): Replication-by-Translation for Studying Norms in Multi-Agent AIcited by 1
  6. 2026Strategic Polysemy in AI Discourse: A Philosophical Analysis of Language, Hype, and Powercited by 1