Deontic Paradoxes in ASP with Weak Constraints

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how Answer Set Programming with weak constraints can effectively encode and resolve deontic paradoxes, providing a practical methodology for normative reasoning in AI systems with ethical considerations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ASP-based approach using weak constraints to handle deontic paradoxes and generalizes this encoding into a methodology for normative systems.

Findings

Successfully resolves well-known deontic paradoxes using ASP

Provides a methodology for translating normative systems into ASP

Achieves ethically preferable results in an AI game scenario

Abstract

The rise of powerful AI technology for a range of applications that are sensitive to legal, social, and ethical norms demands decision-making support in presence of norms and regulations. Normative reasoning is the realm of deontic logics, that are challenged by well-known benchmark problems (deontic paradoxes), and lack efficient computational tools. In this paper, we use Answer Set Programming (ASP) for addressing these shortcomings and showcase how to encode and resolve several well-known deontic paradoxes utilizing weak constraints. By abstracting and generalizing this encoding, we present a methodology for translating normative systems in ASP with weak constraints. This methodology is applied to "ethical" versions of Pac-man, where we obtain a comparable performance with related works, but ethically preferable results.