Moral competence in social robots

We propose that any robots that collaborate with, look after, or help humans-in short, social robots-must have moral competence. But what does moral competence consist of? We offer a framework for moral competence that attempts to be comprehensive in capturing capacities that make humans morally competent and that therefore represent candidates for a morally competent robot. We posit that human moral competence consists of four broad components: (1) A system of norms and the language and concepts needed to communicate about these norms; (2) moral cognition and affect; (3) moral decision making and action; and (4) moral communication. We sketch what we know and don´t know about these four elements of moral competence in humans and, for each component, ask how we could equip an artificial agent with these capacities.