# Toward the Engineering of Virtuous Machines

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a formal framework for integrating virtue ethics into machine ethics by modeling virtue learning through exemplars, aiming to develop ethically sensitive artificial agents.

## Contribution

It introduces an embryonic formalization of virtue learning based on exemplars, bridging virtue ethics and computational models for machine ethics.

## Key findings

- Developed a formal logic model for virtue learning.
- Applied the model to simulate moral virtue acquisition.
- Lays groundwork for ethically sensitive artificial agents.

## Abstract

While various traditions under the 'virtue ethics' umbrella have been studied extensively and advocated by ethicists, it has not been clear that there exists a version of virtue ethics rigorous enough to be a target for machine ethics (which we take to include the engineering of an ethical sensibility in a machine or robot itself, not only the study of ethics in the humans who might create artificial agents). We begin to address this by presenting an embryonic formalization of a key part of any virtue-ethics theory: namely, the learning of virtue by a focus on exemplars of moral virtue. Our work is based in part on a computational formal logic previously used to formally model other ethical theories and principles therein, and to implement these models in artificial agents.

---
Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1812.03868