The Moral Turing Test, also known as the Ethical Turing Test.
Ethical (Moral) Turing Test, or MTT, is a variant of the Turing Test created by Alan Turing (1912–1954), a mathematician and computer scientist.
A human judge uses a series of written questions and replies
to try to tell the difference between a computer program and a person.
If the computer program imitates a person to the point that
the human judge cannot discern the difference between the computer program's
and the human's replies, the program has passed the test, indicating that it is
capable of intelligent reasoning.
The Moral Turing Test is a more precise version of the
Turing Test that is used to assess a machine's ethical decision-making.
The machine is initially taught broad ethical standards and
how to obey them.
When faced with an ethical problem, the computer should be
able to make judgments based on those ethical standards.
The choices of the computer are then contrasted to those of
a human control, usually an ethicist.
The Moral Turing Test is usually only used in certain
settings that are relevant to a specific area of study.
If the machine is presented with an ethical problem about
health care, for example, its choice will be compared to that of a human
health-care professional rather than a generic human control.
The Moral Turing Test has been regarded as a flawed method
of determining a machine's capacity to exercise moral agency.
The Turing Test uses imitation to determine if a computer
can think, but detractors of the Moral Turing Test argue that in an ethical
issue, imitation may be performed by misleading replies rather than moral
thinking.
However, some say that morality cannot be determined only on
the basis of vocal reactions.
Rather, in a classic Turing Test, the judge must be able to
see what is going on in the background—the reasoning, analysis of alternatives,
decision-making, and actual action—all of which would be concealed from view.
The comparative Moral Turing Test (cMTT), the Total Turing
Test, and verification are all alternatives and modifications to the Moral Turing
Test.
In a Total Turing Test, the judge may see the machine's real
activities and interactions in comparison to the human control.
Verification takes a different approach than testing,
concentrating on the method behind the machine's reaction rather than the result.
Verification is assessing the design and performance of the
machine to determine how it makes decisions.
Verification proponents argue that focusing on the process
rather than the outcome acknowledges that moral questions rarely have a single
correct answer, and that the process by which the machine arrived at an outcome
reveals more about the machine's ability to make ethical decisions than the
decision itself.
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See also:
Turing, Alan; Turing Test
References & Further Reading:
Arnold, Thomas, and Matthias Scheutz. 2016. “Against the Moral Turing Test: Accountable Design and the Moral Reasoning of Autonomous Systems.” Ethics and Information Technology 18:103–15.
Gerdes, Anne, and Peter Øhrstrøm. 2015. “Issues in Robot Ethics Seen through the Lens of a Moral Turing Test.” Journal of Information, Communication, and Ethics in Society 13, no. 2: 98–109.
Luxton, David D., Susan Leigh Anderson, and Michael Anderson. 2016. “Ethical Issues and Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Behavioral and Mental Health Care.” In Artificial Intelligence in Behavioral and Mental Health Care, edited by David D. Luxton, 255–76. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press.
