Leendert van der Torre

An autonomous system is constructed by a manufacturer, operates in a society subject to norms and laws, and interacts with end users. All of these actors are stakeholders affected by the behavior of the autonomous system. We address the challenge of how the ethical views of such stakeholders can be integrated in the behavior of an autonomous system. We propose an ethical recommendation component called Jiminy which uses techniques from normative systems and formal argumentation to reach moral agreements among stakeholders. A Jiminy represents the ethical views of each stakeholder by using normative systems, and has three ways of resolving moral dilemmas that involve the opinions of the stakeholders. First, the Jiminy considers how the arguments of the stakeholders relate to one another, which may already resolve the dilemma. Secondly, the Jiminy combines the normative systems of the stakeholders such that the combined expertise of the stakeholders may resolve the dilemma. Thirdly, and only if these two other methods have failed, the Jiminy uses context-sensitive rules to decide which of the stakeholders take preference over the others. At the abstract level, these three methods are characterized by adding arguments, adding attacks between arguments, and revising attacks between arguments. We show how a Jiminy can be used not only for ethical reasoning and collaborative decision-making, but also to provide explanations about ethical behavior.

An autonomous system is constructed by a manufacturer, operates in a society subject to norms and laws, and interacts with end users. All of these actors are stakeholders affected by the behavior of the autonomous system. We address the challenge of how the ethical views of such stakeholders can be integrated in the behavior of an autonomous system. We propose an ethical recommendation component called Jiminy which uses techniques from normative systems and formal argumentation to reach moral agreements among stakeholders. A Jiminy represents the ethical views of each stakeholder by using normative systems, and has three ways of resolving moral dilemmas that involve the opinions of the stakeholders. First, the Jiminy considers how the arguments of the stakeholders relate to one another, which may already resolve the dilemma. Secondly, the Jiminy combines the normative systems of the stakeholders such that the combined expertise of the stakeholders may resolve the dilemma. Thirdly, and only if these two other methods have failed, the Jiminy uses context-sensitive rules to decide which of the stakeholders take preference over the others. At the abstract level, these three methods are characterized by adding arguments, adding attacks between arguments, and revising attacks between arguments. We show how a Jiminy can be used not only for ethical reasoning and collaborative decision-making, but also to provide explanations about ethical behavior.

The principle-based approach is a methodology to classify and analyse argumentation semantics. In this paper we classify seven of the main alternatives for argumentation semantics using a set of new robustness principles. These principles complement Baroni and Giacomin’s original classification and deal with the behaviour of a semantics when the argumentation framework changes due to the addition or removal of an attack between two arguments. We distinguish so-called persistence principles and monotonicity principles, where the former deal with the question of whether a labelling or extension of an argumentation framework under a given semantics persists after a change, and the latter with the question of whether new labellings or extensions are created after a change. We furthermore show in which sense labelling-based and extension-based semantics lead to subtly different principles and results. Our results can be used for choosing a semantics for a particular application, or to guide the search for new argumentation semantics, but they have been used also in the design of algorithms.