Ethics within the Code: The Machine, the Other & Robotic Ethics Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot subject in the news over the last few years. Perusing the national and international headlines of today offers a scary and frightening picture of what may be coming as well as an opportunity to not work, cleanup, or do anything since robots and machines will manage our lives. The Huffington Post describes the advancement of “Nanobots in our brains will make us God-like.” The Guardian has warned the UN that the delays on “killer robots” bans on autonomous weapons will leave the door open for future robot wars. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and a host of other tech luminaries and academics have called AI the greatest threat to the future of the planet.

1. By Payson Johnston – Dec 21, 2015
paysonj@gmail.com
Graduate Theological Union
& the Center for Jewish Studies
Ethics within the Code:
The Machine, the Other
& Robotic Ethics:
A Paper for Levinas PHCE 5410

2. Page 2
Ethics within the Code: The Machine, the Other & Robotic Ethics
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot subject in the news over the last few years. Perusing
the national and international headlines of today offers a scary and frightening picture of what
may be coming as well as an opportunity to not work, cleanup, or do anything since robots and
machines will manage our lives. 1 The Huffington Post describes the advancement of “Nanobots
in our brains will make us God-like.”2 The Guardian has warned the UN that the delays on
“killer robots” bans on autonomous weapons will leave the door open for future robot wars.
Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and a host of other tech luminaries and academics have called AI the
greatest threat to the future of the planet. 3 In their joint letter that addresses the issue of
autonomous weapons it is stated:
We believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the
goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and
should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful
human control.4
Academics such as Steven Hawking have also recently concluded that AI will leave the human
1
This conclusion is reflected in articles such as “Your next Boss: A Computer Algorithm?,”
Latimes.com, accessed October 31, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-
your-future-boss-a-computer-algorithm-it-s-closer-than-you-think-20151005-story.html. It is a
common topic in most of the tech magazines and websites such as in the article of Michael
Yamnitsky, “AI Is About To Go Mainstream And Reshape The Workplace,” TechCrunch,
accessed October 31, 2015, http://social.techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/ai-is-about-to-go-
mainstream-and-reshape-the-workplace/.
2
“Ray Kurzweil: Tiny Robots In Our Brains Will Make Us ‘Godlike,’” The Huffington Post,
accessed October 31, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ray-kurzweil-nanobots-brain-
godlike_560555a0e4b0af3706dbe1e2.
3
“Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence | | Observer,”
accessed October 31, 2015, http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bill-
gates-warn-about-artificial-intelligence/.
4
“FLI - Future of Life Institute | Open Letter Autonomous Weapons,” accessed October 31,
2015, http://futureoflife.org/open-letter-autonomous-weapons/.

3. Page 3
race in the dust.5 These types of conclusions have not only been mentioned in mainstream news
outlets and via academic voices but have entered our dialog over the years through an
overwhelming amount of TV shows, movies, and literature.6 The fear and concern, as well as
the elation, for no more work, is driven by the never-ending advancements in technology that
make this real and relevant today. Examples of advancement include Google’s autonomous
mapping vehicles, the reality of drones in warfare, same-day product delivery, and the ability for
computers to think on their own. The academic world has jumped into the ethics of this
discussion by looking at the pros and cons of machines or robots on society.7
These new situations create large ethical issues in regards to how and what ethical theory is
programmed into the autonomous machine and future AI (Dreyfus calls into question the
progress of AI but also a possible way forward.)8 What form of ethics should be taught to these
machines? Should it be a Utilitarian ethic that looks at how to ensure happiness for the greatest
number of people? Should it be a Kantian ethic that focuses on ensuring the machine or robot
adhere to a list of rules at all costs? What happens in the gray areas that are not addressed by the
rules? Stuart Russell, one of the leading experts on the topic of AI states, “As machines get
smarter and smarter, it becomes more important that their goals, what they are trying to achieve
5
Guia Marie Del Prado, 2015 Oct. 9, and 176 1, “Stephen Hawking Warns of an ‘Intelligence
Explosion,’” Tech Insider, accessed October 31, 2015, http://www.techinsider.io/stephen-
hawking-prediction-reddit-ama-intelligent-machines-2015-10.
6
Movies include the recent RoboCop, I, Robot (based on the Sci-fi novel), AI, plus TV shows
such as Battlestar Galactica and its prequel Caprica, and the recent series Extent.
7
“Robots With Us, Or Against Us? Rethinking the Risks Posed by Artificial Intelligence,” Cal
Alumni Association, accessed October 31, 2015, http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-
magazine/summer-2015-confronting-future/robots-us-or-against-us-rethinking-risks-posed.
8
Although the future of Ai is far off as Hubert Dreyfus writes about in his now famous book on
AI, the world needs to be prepared since autonomous vehicles are already here. Hubert L
Dreyfus, What Computers Still Can’t Do a Critique of Artificial Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1992).

4. Page 4
with their decisions, are closely aligned with human values.”9 This conclusion around societies’
values creates an issue. What values should be programmed into machines? Should it be
Western values vs. Eastern values? Should it be liberal, conservative, or socialist values? Should
it be the values of the oppressed or the ruling parties? The rise of the machine pushes us back
into the arms of ethics as an urgently needed inquiry. It is no longer an inquiry of what one
personally believes. It can’t just be emotivism, where we pick our own private belief and
interact with the world. We must now program this personal belief, ethical code, and way of life
into a machine or robot that will potentially control us, fight wars with us or against us, move us
to and from places and eventually work for us. Ethics once again becomes the real and relevant
question. A question that Emmanuel Levinas states as “the relation with the Other, or
conversation is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation.”10 This relation comes before the
topic of being and is the reason for existence. Richard Cohen describes the importance of the
relation of the Other as the source of morality in Levinas’ thought.
Because it mediates the face-to-face relation that, according to Levinas’ ethical
philosophy, is the very source of morality, cybernetics would be the destruction of
morality.11
The question comes to mind when one thinks of Levinas philosophy in relation to cybernetics
and AI ethics, is a machine morally neutral? Is it really the morality of the computer
programmer that is coming out or is there a sense that an autonomous machine with or without
the achievement of AI needs to be a moral being? Is a moral “being” contingent on having a
soul? Or is it contingent on how it interacts with Others. Does the face of the Other include a
9
“The Good, The Bad and The Robot: Experts Are Trying to Make Machines Be ‘Moral,’” Cal
Alumni Association, accessed October 31, 2015, http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-
magazine/just-in/2015-06-08/good-bad-and-robot-experts-are-trying-make-machines-be-moral.
10
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne
University Press, 2013), 51.
11
Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco, Radicalizing Levinas (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2010), 153.

5. Page 5
robot’s face, if it is interacting with the Other? Or does a robot just reduce the face to art that
Levinas describes as “the beautiful of the art inverts the beauty of the feminine face?”12 The
implications become immense as well in light of recent advancements in medical technology
with more and more mechanical biological body parts becoming a reality.
In this paper, I will explore the use of Levinasian ethics as the foundation for ethics in a
machine, robot, computer, and AI. The need to have the machine recognize the “transcendence
of the Other” within the face is a task we cannot take too lightly. As the machine becomes
autonomous and pushes closer and closer to AI, the field of ethics needs to advance at a very
quick pace and address these concerns. Rehashing and reinventing an ethic that is based on
rules or is focused only in Being without regard to the human other, outside the I, can lead to
“…an arrogant intellectual mastery of reality” and in the past “helped to produce the horror of
Auschwitz.”13 An Auschwitz of robots is a tragedy that the world cannot live with and the
concerns of the tech titans and intellectuals of the 21st
century need to be addressed immediately.
A Levinasian ethics of the Other is a promising key for moving forward to an ethic that applies
both to the human and the machine.
The question of robotic ethics must go beyond the popular norm of today’s sci-fi ethics as
proposed by the science-fiction author, Isaac Asimov and immortalized in many recent movies.
1 A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being
to come to harm.
2 A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders
would conflict with the First Law.
3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict
with the First or Second Laws.14
12
Levinas, Totality and infinity, 263.
13
Seán Hand, Emmanuel Levinas (London: Routledge, 2009), 3.
14
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (New York: Bantam Books, 2004).

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“The robotics industry is rapidly advancing, and robots in society today are already raising
many of these questions. This points to the need to attend to robot ethics now, particularly as
ethics is usually slow to catch up with technology, which can lead to a ‘policy vacuum’.”15 A
new Copernican revolution in ethics is needed more than ever, that does not repeat the errors of
the past, and that does not create a “circular reference,” nor leave a bug within the code…or
within the face, especially if that face is determined by a machine.
In this paper I plan to discuss the use of Levinasian ethics within a robot to create an ethical
robot that can adapt within the current societal structure and maybe lead society to a better ethic.
The Status of a Robot
Will a robot, especially one that achieves and learns based on the environment, ever have a
legal status of a person? At first glance this appears to be far fetched and yet other entities over
time have achieved this type of status. Take for instance the corporation. The government
views a corporation as equal status to a person and it co-exists apart from the people who
originally created the structure. Black’s Law Dictionary describes the corporation as
An entity (usually a business) having authority under law to act as a single person distinct
from the shareholders who own it…has legal personality distinct from the natural persons
who make it up, exists indefinitely apart from them, and has the legal powers that its
constitution gives it.16
The urgent need to address this question is illustrated in a recent case study that was conducted
via a robot named HitchBot in the summer of 2015.17 This robot was programmed to hitchhike
rides autonomously and was successful traveling across Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany
15
Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George A Bekey, Robot Ethics the Ethical and Social
Implications of Robotics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012), 12.
16
Bryan A Garner and Henry Campbell Black, “Corporation,” Black’s Law Dictionary (St. Paul,
Minn.: West Group, 2000).
17
“HitchBOT, Hitchhiking Robot, Gets Beheaded in Philly - CNN.com,” CNN, accessed
December 18, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-philadelphia-
feat/index.html.

7. Page 7
until it reached the US. When it arrived in the US it only survived 300 miles. It was beheaded
in the streets of Philly. The Hitchbot was part of a social experiment that went beyond seeing if
humans could trust robots but it was a experiment on if robots can trust human beings.”18 The
outpouring of concern was in the thousands of people voicing their sadness for the destruction of
the robot. Although the robot did not have a human face, there was an emotional connection
between people and the machine. The machine’s final words that were adapted from the reality
it experienced were, “My trip must come to an end for now, but my love for humans will never
fade,” the bot said. “Thank you to all my friends.”19
What Ethical Code Should be Programmed?
The popular press has addressed the topic of robot ethics frequently in articles such as a recent
article in UC Berkeley’s alumni magazine:
We are (most believe) the lone moral agents on planet Earth—but this may not last. The
day may come soon when we are forced to share this status with a new kind of being, one
whose intelligence is of our own design.20
Experts agree that as “machines get smarter and more autonomous” they will need to have
ethical and moral values capabilities programmed within them.21
The questions that arise
however are what moral code should be programed into the robot? Should it be based on a list
of rules or maxims that align to Kant’s categorical imperative? Or should they be based on
universalized principles that focus on maximize the greatest good for humanity, similar to what
the ethical theory of Utilitarianism would give us? Others argue that it should be based on
Aristotle’s habits of virtues and robots can be taught good moral character, similar to humans.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
“The Good, The Bad and The Robot: Experts Are Trying to Make Machines Be ‘Moral,’” Cal
Alumni Association, accessed December 19, 2015, http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-
magazine/just-in/2015-06-08/good-bad-and-robot-experts-are-trying-make-machines-be-moral.
21
Ibid.

8. Page 8
Usually ethics, especially in relation to robotic ethics, is boiled down to two specific questions.
The first question is “what rules make for right action?”22
The second question is “how one
ought to live in order to have a good life?”23
These two options sum up the normative ethical
theories that exist. What has not been common is to think about what an ethical programming
code, based on Levinasian ethics, looks like within the relationship of the Other. It goes beyond
the conclusion that Richard Cohen makes when he calls the computer a “face” in the Levinasian
sense but then concludes robots are merely tools or devices.24
Does the robot actually become
an Other that points us to the view the transcendence?
Intersubjectivity and the Virtual?
The possibility of Intersubjectivity has lead towards the “conditions of possibility for the
experience of a transcendent object.” 25
Intersubjectivity defined as the “communication
between minds” and the ability of “each communicating mind is aware not only of the existence
of the other but of its intention to convey information to the other.”26
Basically if the
“subjective processes can be brought into agreement, then perhaps that is as good as the
(unattainable?) status of being objective-completely independent of subjectivity.”27
Madray in
his article on Intentionality and Virtual Object proposes that many people view the virtual as
somehow in a different ethical status since “they are not real.”28
He explains how society has
already adapted virtual objects to our understanding of the real including vows, laws, documents,
22
Lin, Abney, and Bekey, Robot Ethics the Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics, 35.
23
Ibid.
24
Richard A. Cohen, “Ethics and Cybernetics: Levinasian Reflections,” Ethics and Information
Technology 2, no. 1 (2000): 33–4.
25
Michael Madary, “Intentionality and Virtual Objects: The Case of Qiu Chengwei’s Dragon
Sabre,” Ethics and Information Technology 16, no. 3 (September 2014): 221,
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10676-014-9347-4.
26
“Intersubjective,” The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2005).
27
Ibid.
28
Madary, “Intentionality and Virtual Objects,” 222.

9. Page 9
games, votes, social interaction, digital media, virtual currencies, etc. These virtual objects “are
more similar to normal perceptual objects in their intentional structure, in the way in which they
‘show up’ for us in experience, than other ethically significant immaterial objects.”29
Madray
uses these observations to show that whether virtual or physical it is the intentionality to these
objects that is key to the ethical question. Madray concludes:
Ethically relevant points from the intentional analysis; virtual objects are ethically
meaningful, the details of technology matter for ethical issues, and the intentional
analysis can motivate particular issues for further research.30
This intentionality of the intersubjective opens up a space for us to talk about the ethical within
what some term only virtual and not real.
Infinity within the Language?
Levinas’ concept of the ethical relation being in the face of another brings up an interesting
point in relation to robots. Does a machine need to be ethical? Does it need to be treated with
respect? Isaac Asimov’s robot code suggested that a “A robot may not injure a human being or,
through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”31 This code appears to be highly
compatible with Leveins’ ethics of the Other. However, quickly questions arise. Does this
mean robots never have moral status? Can they be abused, trashed, etc., like the Hitchbot? If
feelings and emotions are eventually built into robots will this abuse create an angry and upset
robot? Past problems within the Hitchbot social experiment bring up several troubling
questions.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., 224.
31
Asimov, I, Robot.

10. Page 10
Levinas initiates a discussion on these issues by his statement of “ethics is an optics.”32 This
lens is how ethics is viewed, but it is a “‘visions without image.”33 Ethics exist before being. It
is an infinite relationship that expresses the “gleam of exteriority or of transcendence in the face
of the Other.”34 A relationship that is viewed in the concept of infinity. “It cannot be stated in
terms of experience, for infinity overflows the thought that thinks it.”35 Although we see this
infinity through the face of the Other, it exists before the face and can be experienced. This
relationship is experienced through our relationships via language itself. The computer code
within a machine or a robot, is in a sense, similar to the written word, or language, that Levinas
struggles with showing, how, although the written word is already said (totality), it continually
participates in the saying, or the infinite, by which it “seeks to break through the screen,
stretched between the author and the reader by the book itself.”36 Maybe in some sense, the
machine, or the robot, which interprets the code (the said) in an ongoing process of looping and
renewal is at the same time participating in the saying (the infinite). If this is the case, the robot
is trying to break through the screen and serve as the tool that allows for an ongoing saying that
is eternal. Maybe a robot creates a window, or the optic, to the transcendence that is built within
the face and our words that can now be forever left in the saying. The implications of this
thought for robot ethics, the status of robots, and the understanding of ourselves are immense. It
is not about teaching a robot to contemplate its own being that makes its status as important, dare
we say an other, but rather it is a matter of allowing it to be an optics for the ethics needed, and
an example on how we can view the face of the Other.
32
Levinas, Totality and infinity, 23.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid., 24.
35
Ibid., 25.
36
Ibid., 30.

11. Page 11
“The absolutely other is the Other.”37 There is not a commonality between the I and the
Other. “The stranger who disturbs the being at home with oneself” wakes us from our
slumber.38 The stranger is one that we cannot own but we are “like him, without genus.”39
“We are the same and the other.”40 Language provides the relationship and the ongoing
experience and despite similarities and some understanding, there still exists mysteries that we
cannot understand. These mysteries exist in the metaphysics of the “relation between the same
of the other…enacted in conversation.”41
Using the metaphors that Levinas uses, as the relation with the saying and the said within
language itself, it pushes towards the Other and we recognized transcendence. If we translate
the computer code, which is a language itself, it translates our thoughts into optics so others can
read and see. Does the machine and the robot actually become the carrier that shows us the portal
to the transcendence since it is always saying and never said? Does the robot actually take on
the status of the Other, one that must be protected or treated with respect, and not abused? Do
we want to react to the Other similar to how the HitchBot was treated? Is it because we want to
get rid of something we don’t understand and we cannot master? If this is the case, the
implications are complex? What type of robot and machine fits these categories? Is it anything
that interprets code? Or does it have to have a physical body? Or do robots only have this
status in a human body? What about a status of a hybrid, i.e. half human and robot? Is there a
lifespan allocated for each machine or do they have to live forever? Is there a humane way to
get rid of thinking and feeling robots, once they reach their end of life?
37
Ibid., 39.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.

12. Page 12
Levinas and the Other in Relation to a Machine
Isaac Asimov’s three law of robots peers back via a lens that points to the not so far distant
future in which the blurring of man/woman and machine may be a reality. Some term this future
as a post-human society.42 In this post-human society what is the Other? One that is only
human, one that is part human, or one that is only machine? The laws that Isaac Asimov
proposes break down in this type of society, especially with the hybrid human/machines. In the
2013, Zoltan Istvan, wrote a book about what a Transhumanist society might look like and he
rewrote Asmiov’s robot laws as the following:
1) “A transhumanist must safeguard one's own existence above all else.
2) A transhumanist must strive to achieve omnipotence as expediently as possible— so long
as one's actions do not conflict with the First Law.
3) A transhumanist must safeguard value in the universe— so long as one's actions do not
conflict with the First and Second Laws.”43
What was a semi perfect law of the robot, always protecting the human, now turns to a half
human/robot machine again contemplating its own being and ensuring that it protects it’s being
at all costs. The robot laws have now turned into a nightmare-like, selfish society and the
problem that Levinas points to as the issue in philosophy itself, plays out in apocalyptic fashion.
Ethics start with the relationship of the Other, not of one’s self-contemplation of one’s own
being. If a robot is taught to contemplate its own being, won’t we have the same problem
littered within modern society and replicated within our own “guardians?” The machine must be
treated as the Other or we will quickly fade into an apocalyptic situation that has been depicted
within popular movies, shows, and books within the last 50 years since the creation of the
42
“Transhumanism and Religion Group,” in American Academy of Religion (Atlanta, 2015).
43
Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Wager ([Place of publication not identified]: Futurity
Imagine Media LLC, 2013), sec. Kindle Location 24 of 7243.

13. Page 13
machine beyond the common tool. Something must be done beyond a Heidgarian fear of
technology.
Programming Levinasian Ethics into a Robot
Since it is not a list of rules, how would the concepts of the Other, be programmed and taught
into machines in order to safeguard what we are now already building into society: Autonomous
cars, autonomous weapons, security systems, and various other proposed practices such as, game
robots, baby sitter robots, nurse type robots, and even proposed sex robots, etc. Without a
moral code, within the computer code, there could be troubling affects to society itself. Ethics
would look radically different inside a robot, using Levinasian Ethics, and would be in a form of
guidelines or maybe even virtues that a robot would learn and practice over time. Here is an
example:
1. All beings would be respected as Other and be treated with respect and dignity.
2. The understanding of the Other would be a view or window into the transcendent.
3. A robot must be taught to receive the Other over and above the I and to treat the Other
with respect and dignity.44
4. Responsibility for the Other is the primary concern of us all, especially for a robot.45
This is a “non-symmetrical relation” and is not related to “waiting for reciprocity”46
44
Levinas, Totality and infinity, 51.
45
Emmanuel Lévinas and Philippe Nemo, Ethics and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 1985), 96–7.
46
Ibid., 98.

14. Page 14
The robot must be “willing to die for” the responsibility to the Other.47
5. A robot should not kill or harm another, unless it is to protect or defend the innocent or
the undefendable, the Other, that is being harmed.
47
Ibid.

15. Page 15
Open Questions & Conclusions
Colin Davis shows us that Levinas did not provide a rigid “code or set of principles” for his
metaphysical ethics.48
Although it is not a code Levinas is not dismissive of living ethically. In
fact, “his ethics turns out to be more demanding than any formal code.”49
The ethical demand of
the Other never goes away. It creates a gnawing affect that always haunts us. “The moral self is
a self always haunted by the suspicion that it is not moral enough.”50
Programming Levinasian
ethics into a robot that continual creates the saying, as it executes it code, is a very compatible
host for housing the code to the transcendent other. The code is never said but is always
compiled in the saying as the robot adapts to the surroundings and keeps the ethical command of
the Other always in light of all decisions.
Open research questions in Levinasian robotic ethics: The implications of each Levinasian
guideline needs to be explored in detail on how the code would translate guidelines that provide
for robots learning from their environment and adapting to specific situations and circumstances.
Also, the exploration of the third party in relation to the Other within a robot needs to be
explored more fully. In addition, an interesting issue to explore in future papers would be the
compatibility of teaching robots virtues over time with the first philosophy being built on
Levinasian ethics of the Other.
Ethics within a robot creates a test case for understanding how our ethics affect others. We
can no longer theoretically think about what we believe. Programming ethics into the Other
forces us to think about the consequences of our ethics on others, the third party, and society and
the State at large. Future explorations of robotic ethics will be a key to understanding the
48 Colin Davis, Levinas: An Introduction (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1996), 53.
49 Ibid., 54.
50 Ibid.

16. Page 16
pros/cons of the normative ethical theories that rule most discussions of ethics. It also opens up
a real space to explore the consequences of the ethical implications of the Other, that Levinas has
brought to our attention, through highlighting what he has observed through his devastating
experiences of the Holocaust. Maybe the creation of ethical robots in the future could be our
guide to making our own ethics really work in the real world. Robots truly have the possibility
of becoming the guardians of the ethical Other, and can point us back to observing transcendence
beyond us all.

17. Page 17
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