Building expert critics for ethical issue testing

Abstract An expert critic (or an expert critiquing system) is a computer program that critiques human-generated solutions. So far, ethics has not been incorporated in critiquing systems. We investigate the important issue of incorporating ethical issue testing into expert critic systems. To illustrate the need for such a study, our discussion consists of ethical issue testing in physicians' treatment plans for cancer patients. Three ethical issues are identified, and one of them, namely, the Guinea pig treatment ethics, is discussed in detail. An experimental prototype system (ETHICS 1) has been developed for this purpose. The structure of this system along with its implementation is described. We compare our study with existing expert critiquing systems and point out some implications of building critics for ethical issue testing.