Whose ethics should be programmed into the robots of tomorrow?

In many cases, our intentions and actions are jarringly different; the millions of dollars wasted on unused gym memberships and the scattered ground of broken marriages are testament to that. In other situations, we simply don’t know what we would do.

Also, it’s not clear that values and ethics are something that should be democratized. The lone and brave good person is just as good in a mass of bad. 

• Moral thought experiments serve to perturb the initial conditions of a moral situation until one's intuitions vary.
• This can be philosophically useful insofar as we may be able to analyze which salient feature of the dilemma caused that variance.
• Thought experiments are evidence that either corroborates or falsifies a certain hypothesis. They are not the hypothesis itself.

There are a great many philosophical problems raised by emerging technology and AI. As machines start to integrate more and more into our lives, they will inevitably face more and more ethical decisions. On any given day, you will make a great many ethical decisions, and a significant number of these will be your choice based on your values. 

There is no “perfect moral citizen” and there is no black and white when it comes to right and wrong. If there were, ethics would be a much less interesting area of study.