Can Machine Learn Morality

“Can Machines Learn Morality,” “morality” is defined as a person's standards of what is right and wrong. Drones are better at processing wartime morality than human soldiers because they have no other motive for their actions such as fear or trauma. However, they are also worse because they would have to interpret and execute actions that follow the rules of war and also split-second decisions that may have large impacts. Due to this, it is not possible for machines to learn wartime morality.

Machines can only reason through the programming that it's creator has written. There is no way to truly give a machine the thought of a human. If we include all human idiosyncrasies and judgments, a machine could become smarter than us but they will

never be us. The human brain can be described as a machine, but are still full of feelings. Machines are often built with our own intelligence as a baseline, but how can a program think for itself? There is no way for machines to be capable of feelings and at certain points keeping someone alive may not be moral and keeping an enemy alive may be. A human can disobey their orders but a robot cannot disobey their programming and ultimately the decisions that they make will depend on what the programmer thinks is moral, and who is say who has the most correct and righteous morals. Due to this robots can never be moral, but part of the issue is that one human cannot remain moral in all situations and certainly some bias should appear. Even if the coding was peer-reviewed dozens of times there was always some little thing that may seem morally just at first but may turn out different.

Machines are not affected by trauma and cannot be motivated by fear or revenge to make unethical decisions. However, it is not necessarily bad to have ulterior motives or to have suffered from trauma. Many people are spurred to do things to make the world a better place and often make moral decisions based off their previous experiences. Many volunteers for charities often either have been through the events that they're trying to help or just feel a great deal for empathy. Even if a robot can learn to make moral decisions it doesn't mean it'll feel, and fear and wrath are only a small fraction of all the emotions and motivators out there. If we were to trade human judgments in favor of robot judgments on the basis that robots will not be affected by human emotions, we should also consider that it is our capricious emotions that have lead to some of the bravest things a person can be. After all, a robot may not feel fear, but it also cannot feel mercy.