ABSTRACT
The Internet of Things (IoT), despite its dynamic development and setting up in technology, business and human consciousness, still faces many research challenges. These challenges are technical not only related to interoperability, scalability, security and privacy but also related to social, legal and ethical problems. The IoT in large may exclude or even excludes the human-in-the-loop paradigm, where the decision-making is shifted to networked intelligent systems, e.g., intelligent edge systems. Concerns about their verification, validity, security, control and ethical consequences of functioning are expressed. Recently, the notion of Machine Ethics (ME), i.e., adding moral behaviors to machines that use Artificial Intelligence (AI), has been discussed also in the context of the IoT. The paper addresses the ethical performance of intelligent agents interconnected in the IoT network. Issues of ME from the IoT perspective are revised and recent undertakings of multidisciplinary bodies to counter ethical threats in AI and IoT are recalled. The paper also fosters pushing the discourse and reflection on ME issues (availability, reliability and trade-offs) to the wider group of IoT engineers and students.
