Killer Robot The person with the greatest responsibility for the death of Bart Matthews was Ray Johnson. Johnson contributed to the death of Matthews in several ways. The most important of these was ordering the tests to be faked by Yardley. Johnson was in a position of authority over Yardley, and therefore bears a higher degree of responsibility for the outcome of the faked tests. If the tests had not been faked, the error would have been discovered by Yardley or somebody else. Indeed, Johnson seemed to know about the error. Johnson also went around the project head Mr. Reynolds to fake the tests, under the assumption that it was more important for the project to be completed on time than completed correctly. He also incorrectly assumed that a fall back (the interface) would be sufficient to prevent a worst-case outcome. He had no basis for that assumption.

By any ethical standard, Johnson's violations were severe. From a deontological perspective, Johnson was wrong to order the tests to be falsified, especially since the testing process is the most important safeguard against...

Johnson also placed upholding the contractual terms with respect to the project completion date as more important than potential bodily harm to the operator. From a consequentialist point-of-view, Johnson's actions led directly to the death of Matthews because he dismantled the most important safeguard. Consequentialist ethics require that potential outcomes be evaluated for both their likelihood and severity in order to make the most ethical choice. In this case, Johnson's ethical calculus was shoddy, as his lack of experience in programming caused him to miscalculate the odds of the operator being cause grievous bodily harm. This despite his acknowledgement that "perfect software is an oxymoron" -- he knew the risks but chose to override that knowledge in favor of an outcome that was more favorable to him professionally.
The person with the least responsibility is Samuels. The two biggest faults of Samuels are irrelevant to the death of Matthews. He may have had an abrasive personality, but the project head (Reynolds) has the responsibility of addressing that --…