12.5 Clarifying the Ethics of Justice: Extending the Golden Rule in to a Multifactorial Ethical Model 221 And the concept of “setting a good example” ties in with an important concept from learning theory: imitative learning. Humans appear to be hard-wired for imitative learning, in part via mirror neuron systems in the brain; and, it seems clear that at least in the early stages of AGI development, imitative learning is going to play a key role. Copying what other agents do is an extremely powerful heuristic, and while AGIs may eventually grow beyond this, much of their early ethical education is likely to arise during a phase when they have not done so. A strength of the classic Golden Rule is that one is acting according to behaviors that one wants one’s observers to imitate — which makes sense in that many of these observers will be using imitative learning as a significant part of their learning toolkit. The truth of the matter, it seems, is (as often happens) not all that simple or elegant. Ethical behavior seems to be most pragmatically viewed as a multi-objective optimization problem, where among the multiple objectives are three that we have just discussed, and two others that emerge from learning theory and will be discussed shortly: 1. The imitability (i.e. the Golden Rule fairly narrowly and directly construed): the goal of acting in a way so that having others directly imitate one’s actions, in directly comparable contexts, is desirable to oneself 2. The comprehensibility: the goal of acting in a way so that others can understand the principles underlying one’s actions 3. Experiential groundedness. An intelligent agent should not be expected to act according to an ethical principle unless there are many examples of the principle-in-action in its own direct or observational experience 4. The categorical imperative: Act according to abstract principles that you would be happy to see implemented as universal laws 5. Logical coherence. An ethical sys