A Roboticist’s Guide to the Engineering Ethics of Job Automation

There is concern about robots taking people’s jobs. Advances in automation risk bringing material and psychological harm to workers, so it is important to study the ethics of this engineering discipline. Existing work focuses on either policy to ameliorate workers’ income loss or the effects of losing agency. What is missing is a guide to help automation engineers and roboticists evaluate their moral responsibilities. This article addresses that gap by providing some motivation for these practitioners to consider the ethics of job obsolescence and tools to evaluate relevant professional choices.