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Tim Orenstein

Assignment 1: Information Literacy


CSIT 101 MWF


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Information Literacy: Robot Morality Articles
1&2) The first article that I read, "Robot Frets Over Moral Puzzle, Humans Die," was written
form Discover.com by Glenn McDonald. It gave a brief summary of a moral puzzle that was
given to a robot by robotics researcher Alan Winfield. He set the robot on a course with a goal
and the rule that it must prevent "human" robots from coming to harm. When the robot was sent
out with only one "human" to save, it succeeded without fail. When there were two "humans"
the robot was able to save them both a couple of times, but in 14/33 trials the robot froze wile
trying to decide who to save. The article brings up the notion that this same dilemma is one of
the issues posed to researchers trying to design self autonomous cars. (McDonald)
3) I ran the search "robot moral puzzle" on both Bing and Google. Both search engines gave me
the first article that I used right at the top of the list. However, while Google carried on with the
topic, Bing devolved to showing me options for robot themed games and a Facebook page after
only three related options. From Bing I ended up choosing a blog article which mimicked the
title of the Discovery.com article. However, after perusing the two pages of results on Google
that were relevant, I selected an article on The Newyorker's website which discusses the notion
of morals and driverless cars. Judging on this search alone I would say that Google gives more
relevant and official sources.
4) "Robots Fret Over Moral Puzzle, Humans Die" - Glenn McDonald
1. Published September 15, 2014
2. This article is directly about the topic I was searching for.
Tim Orenstein
Assignment 1: Information Literacy
CSIT 101 MWF


#

3. The author is not a researcher or robotics expert. He isn't qualified to really analyze this
topic, but he merely provides a summary of the research exercise. I found all this out by
going to his profile on Discovery.com then following a link to his website.
4. The information seems to be trustworthy. There is a link to a video showing the puzzle
and some of its outcomes. This supports what the author is saying.
5. The article was written to inform readers about some research being done into robots
programmed with morality.
5) I found two articles using the ProQuest data base. I chose this data base because it was the
first one on the "top 5 databases" list on the CCBC libraries site. The first one article was
"Robo-Morality" by Joshua Myers. The second one was "Morals and Machines" by Braden
Allenby. I found them by first searching for "Robot Morality puzzle," and the second by simply
searching "Robot Morals."
6) The journal articles were just about as easy to get to as the internet article. In fact, Google
had given one of them as an option while I was searching for my first article. The timelines of
the journal articles is pretty varied. One of them was from August 2014 and the other is from
way back in 2012. By comparison I think that the internet articles are more likely to be recent.
However, that does come at the cost of authority. The Journal articles were written by
professionals in the robotics field, but the internet article I found was simply written by a
reporter.
Tim Orenstein
Assignment 1: Information Literacy
CSIT 101 MWF


$


Bibliography
Myers, J. (2014). Robo-morality. The Humanist, 74(4), 9-11. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1545877309?accountid=3784
Allenby, B. (2012). Morals and machines. Nature, 481(7379), 26-27. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/918111158?accountid=3784
Marcus, Gary. "Moral Machines - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. N.p., 24 Nov. 2012. Web.
20 Sept. 2014.
McDonald, Glenn. "Robot Frets Over Moral Puzzle, Humans Die : DNews." DNews. N.p., 15
Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.
"Robot Frets Over Moral Puzzle, Humans Die." Army Racing. N.p., 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Sept.
2014.

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