Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: "The Rules"

The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions held a workshop sponsored by the US National Science Foundation on March 2010 that discussed ethical guidance for the research and application of pervasive and autonomous information technology. The workshop aimed to develop a short statement about the ethics of developing computer systems, and this statement has since evolved into a document about moral responsibility. Moral responsibility for computing artifacts is used to indicate that people are answerable for their behavior when they produce or use computing artifacts, and that their actions reflect on their character. A person's responsibility includes being answerable for the behaviors of the artifact and for the artifact's effects after deployment, to the degree to which these effects are reasonably foreseeable by that person.