The art of creating machines with ethical behaviour is something that robot scientists and philosophers have started to study.

What part has man to play in a future, in which ethical decisions will be taken also by machines?

When will a machine become a human being?

The question of borderlines between man and machine may seem trivial today, but it becomes in fact more and more important.

 

In the future robots will become more and more human-like, while man will be more and more robot-like, partly by means of various types of implants, sharing technology with robots; but also through a “socialization process”,in which we will learn how to deal with robots. If it will be possible at all to talk about man as a distinct species, perhaps we will be obliged to face the most difficult of all questions:

Is there really a need for human beings?

Only the species at the top of the hierarchy will be released from justifying its existence.

Henrik Carlsen has worked at FOI (the Research Institute of the Swedish National Defence) in a little more than ten years.

He has got a broad background within many of the FOI fields of activity. In recent years his focus has been:

1) Climate change, mainly questions of adaptation as well as connection with security, development, and geopolitics;

2) Technological development and social change. In the latter field Henrik Carlsen is concentrated on possible dangers involved with future technologies, primarily ethical aspects on what is usually known as “autonomous systems”, i.e. technical systems, which in some sense make “their own” decisions.