The ‘Three Rs’ tenet (replacement, reduction, refinement) is a widely accepted cornerstone of Canadian and international policies on animal-based science. The Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) initiated this web-based survey to obtain greater understanding of ‘principal investigators’ and ‘other researchers’ (i.e. graduate students, post-doctoral researchers etc.) views on the Three Rs, and to identify obstacles and opportunities for continued implementation of the Three Rs in Canada. Responses from 414 participants indicate that researchers currently do not view the goal of replacement as achievable. Researchers prefer to use enough animals to ensure quality data is obtained rather than using the minimum and potentially waste those animals if a problem occurs during the study. Many feel that they already reduce animal numbers as much as possible and have concerns that further reduction may compromise research. Most participants were ambivalent about re-use, but expressed concern that the practice could compromise experimental outcomes. In considering refinement, many researchers feel there are situations where animals should not receive pain relieving drugs because it may compromise scientific outcomes, although there was strong support for the Three Rs strategy of conducting animal welfare-related pilot studies, which were viewed as useful for both animal welfare and experimental design. Participants were not opposed to being offered “assistance” to implement the Three Rs, so long as the input is provided in a collegial manner, and from individuals who are perceived as experts. It may be useful for animal use policymakers to consider what steps are needed to make replacement a more feasible goal. In addition, initiatives that offer researchers greater practical and logistical support with Three Rs implementation may be useful. Encouragement and financial support for Three Rs initiatives may result in valuable contributions to Three Rs knowledge and improve welfare for animals used in science.
We can learn about human ethics from machines. We discuss the design of a working machine for making ethical decisions, the N-Reasons platform, applied to the ethics of robots. This N-Reasons platform builds on web based surveys and experiments, to enable participants to make better ethical decisions. Their decisions are better than our existing surveys in three ways. First, they are social decisions supported by reasons. Second, these results are based on weaker premises, as no exogenous expertise (aside from that provided by the participants) is needed to seed the survey. Third, N-Reasons is designed to support experiments so we can learn how to improve the platform. We sketch experimental results that show the platform is a success as well as pointing to ways it can be improved.
Introduction: As applications of robotics extend to areas that directly impact human life, such as the military and eldercare, the deployment of autonomous and semiautonomous robots increasingly requires the input of stakeholder opinions. Up to now, technological deployment has been relying on the guidance of government/military policy and the healthcare system without specific incorporation of professional and lay opinion. Methods: This paper presents results from a roboethics study that uses the unique N-Reasons scenario-based survey instrument. The instrument collected Yes, No, Neutral responses from more than 250 expert and lay responders via the Internet along with their ethics-content reasons for the answers, allowing the respondents to agree to previously-provided reasons or to write their own. Data from three questions relating to military and eldercare robots are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results: The survey reveals that respondents weigh the appropriateness of robotics technology deployment in concert with the level of autonomy conferred upon it. The accepted level of robot autonomy does not appear to be solely dependent on the perceived efficiency and effectiveness of the technology, but is subject to the robot's A. Moon ( ) · H.F.M. Van der Loos relationship with the public's principle-based reasons and the application field in focus. Conclusion: The N-Reasons instrument was effective in eliciting ethical commentary in a simple, on-line survey format and provides insights into the interactions between the issues that respondents consider across application and technology boundaries.
Levine argues that neither self-interest nor altruism explains experimental results in bargaining and public goods games. Subjects' preferences appear also to be sensitive to their opponents' perceived altruism. Sethi and Somanathan provide a general account of reciprocal preferences that survive under evolutionary pressure. Although a wide variety of reciprocal strategies pass this evolutionary test, Sethi and Somanthan conjecture that fewer are likely to survive when reciprocal strategies compete with each other. This paper develops evolutionary agent-based models to test their conjecture in cases where reciprocal preferences can differ in a variety of games. We confirm that reciprocity is necessary but not sufficient for optimal cooperation. We explore the theme of competition among reciprocal cooperators and display three interesting emergent organizations: racing to the ''moral high ground,'' unstable cycles of preference change, and, when we implement reciprocal mechanisms, hierarchies resulting from exploiting fellow cooperators. If reciprocity is a basic mechanism facilitating cooperation, we can expect interaction that evolves around it to be complex, non-optimal, and resistant to change.
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