Robots today serve in many roles, from entertainer to educator to executioner. As robotics technology advances, ethical concerns become more pressing: Should robots be programmed to follow a code of ethics, if this is even possible? Are there risks in forming emotional bonds with robots? How might society--and ethics--change with robotics? This volume is the first book to bring together prominent scholars and experts from both science and the humanities to explore these and other questions in this emerging field. Starting with an overview of the issues and relevant ethical theories, the topics flow naturally from the possibility of programming robot ethics to the ethical use of military robots in war to legal and policy questions, including liability and privacy concerns. The contributors then turn to human-robot emotional relationships, examining the ethical implications of robots as sexual partners, caregivers, and servants. Finally, they explore the possibility that robots, whether biological-computational hybrids or pure machines, should be given rights or moral consideration. Ethics is often slow to catch up with technological developments. This authoritative and accessible volume fills a gap in both scholarly literature and policy discussion, offering an impressive collection of expert analyses of the most crucial topics in this increasingly important field

• Introduction to robot ethics / Patrick Lin
• George A. Bekey
• Keith Abney
• Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach
• James Hughes
• Selmer Bringsjord and Joshua Taylor
• Noel Sharkey
• Marcello Guarini and Paul Bello
• Gert-Jan Lokhorst and Jeroen van den Hoven
• Richard M. O'Meara
• Peter M. Asaro
• M. Ryan Calo
• Matthias Scheutz
• David Levy
• Blay Whitby
• Jason Borenstein and Yvette Pearson
• Noel Sharkey and Amanda Sharkey
• Steve Petersen
• Rob Sparrow
• Kevin Warwick
• Anthony F. Beavers
• Gianmarco Veruggio and Keith Abney Current topics in robotics : technology and ethics / Robotics, ethical theory, and metaethics : a guide for the perplexed / Moral machines : contradictions in terms or abdication of human responsibility? / Compassionate AI and selfless robots : a Buddhist approach / The divine-command approach to robot ethics / Killing made easy : from joysticks to politics / Robotic warfare : some challenges in moving from noncivilian to civilian theaters / Responsibility for military robots / Contemporary governance architecture regarding robotics technologies : an assessment / A body to kick but still no soul to damn : legal perspectives on robotics / Robots and privacy / The inherent dangers of unidirectional emotional bonds between humans and social robots / The ethics of robot prostitutes / Do you want a robot lover? : the ethics of caring technologies / Robot caregiver : ethical issues across the human lifespan / The rights and wrongs of robot care / Designing people to serve / Can machines be people? : reflections on the Turing triage test / Robots with biological brains / Moral machines and the threat of ethical nihilism / Roboethics : the applied ethics for a new science /