  While many see the prospect of autonomous machines as threatening, autonomy
may be exactly what we want in a superintelligent machine. There is a sense of
autonomy, deeply rooted in the ethical literature, in which an autonomous
machine is necessarily an ethical one. Development of the theory underlying
this idea not only reveals the advantages of autonomy, but it sheds light on a
number of issues in the ethics of artificial intelligence. It helps us to
understand what sort of obligations we owe to machines, and what obligations
they owe to us. It clears up the issue of assigning responsibility to machines
or their creators. More generally, a concept of autonomy that is adequate to
both human and artificial intelligence can lead to a more adequate ethical
theory for both.
