Page - 84 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

84 R. Marselis • law1:Arobotmaynot injureahumanbeingor, throughinaction,allowahuman being tocome toharm. • law 2: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where suchorderswouldconflictwith theFirst Law. • law3:Arobotmustprotect itsownexistenceas longassuchprotectiondoesnot conflictwith theFirst orSecondLaw. Other sourcesaddedsomeadditional laws: • law 4:A robotmustestablish its identityasa robot inall cases. • law 5:A robotmustknowit is a robot. • law 6: A robot must reproduce.As long as such reproductiondoes not interfere with theFirst orSecondorThirdLaw. Unfortunately,we observe that, unlike in Asimov’s stories, these robot laws are notbuilt in in most intelligentmachines. It’sup to the team memberswith a digital test engineeringrole toassess towhat level the intelligentmachineadheres to these laws. Ethics Ethics is about acting according to various principles. Important principles are laws, rules, and regulations, but for ethics the unwritten moral values are the most important.Somechallengesofmachineethicsaremuch likemanyotherchallenges involved in designing machines. Designing a robot arm to avoid crushing stray humans isnomoremorally fraught thandesigninga flame-retardantsofa. With respect to intelligentmachines importantquestionsrelated toethicsare: • Does it observecommonethical rules? • Does it cheat? • Does it distinguishbetweenwhat is allowedandwhat isnotallowed? Tobeethically responsible, the intelligentmachineshould informitsusersabout thedata that is in thesystemandwhat thisdata isused for. Ethics will cause various challenges. For example: it isn’t too difficult to have an AI learn (using machine learning) to distinguish people based on facial or other bodypartcharacteristics,forexample,raceandsexualpreference.Inmostcountries, thiswouldnotbeethical. So testers need to haveacceptancecriteria for this anddo somethingwith it. Another ethical dilemma is who is responsible when an intelligent machine causes an accident? There is no driver in the car, just passengers. Should the programmer of the intelligent software be responsible? Or the salesman that sold the car? Or the manufacturer? All ethical (and some legal) dilemma’s. And who should be protected in case of an autonomous car crash? Some manufacturers of autonomous cars have already announced that their cars will always protect the people inside the car. That may be smart from a business point of view (otherwise no one would buy the car) but from an ethical perspective, is it right to let a few passengers in thecarprevailovera largegroupofpedestriansoutside thecar?