Scientists have developed a technique that teaches robots ethical behaviour by training them to read human stories, learn acceptable sequences of events and understand successful ways to behave in human societies.
“The collected stories of different cultures teach children how to behave in socially acceptable ways with examples of proper and improper behaviour in fables, novels and other literature,” said Mark Riedl, associate professor at at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States.
“We believe story comprehension in robots can eliminate psychotic-appearing behaviour and reinforce choices that won’t harm humans and still achieve the intended purpose,” Riedl said. Quixote is a technique for aligning an artificial intelligence (AI)’s goals with human values by placing rewards on socially appropriate behaviour.
It builds upon Riedl’s prior research the Scheherazade system which demonstrated how artificial intelligence can gather a correct sequence of actions by crowdsourcing story plots from the Internet.