Smart Contract-Based Ethics Engine for Autonomous Agents

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of autonomous agents—ranging from self-driving vehicles to industrial robots—has raised profound ethical concerns regarding decision-making in safety-critical situations. Traditional governance mechanisms struggle to adapt in real time to dynamic contexts, leading to calls for embedding ethics directly into agents’ operational logic. This manuscript proposes a novel Smart Contract‑Based Ethics Engine (SCEE) that leverages blockchain’s immutability, transparency, and automated execution to enforce ethical guidelines at runtime. The SCEE architecture comprises three core components: (1) a Decentralized Ethics Repository (DER) that stores formalized ethical rules as smart contracts; (2) an On‑Chain Decision Validator (ODV) that intercepts agents’ action proposals and evaluates them against DER rules; and (3) an Audit Trail Module (ATM) that records all compliance checks for post‑hoc analysis and accountability. We conduct a controlled simulation involving autonomous delivery drones navigating urban environments with conflicting priorities (e.g., pedestrian safety vs. delivery speed). Results indicate that agents interfaced with the SCEE commit 78% fewer ethically questionable actions compared to a control group, with system overhead averaging 3% latency increase. The architecture demonstrates scalability to networks of up to 1,000 agents and adaptability to evolving normative frameworks via on‑chain rule updates. We conclude that integrating smart contract‑based ethics engines into autonomous systems can materially enhance ethical compliance without compromising performance. Future work will explore interoperability across heterogeneous agent platforms and real‑world pilot deployments.