I am in the process of writing a science fiction novel that will involve a large quantity and variety of synthetic life forms. I have been highly influenced by the works of Asimov, and while I may not explicitly state the laws I utilize for the governance of artificial life, I want to have a solid footing for how my robots -or whatever they might be called- are able to make ethical decisions. From a plot perspective, I also want some realistic ways ways that these rules could be hacked or otherwise subverted.
I know I could ask this question on a pure coding site, but I don't want to be inundated with lines of raw code. At the same time I don't want to read through tomes of philosophy that have no foundation in modern computer programming. I'm looking for something in between... So I thought that there must be some other sci-fi minded folks around writers.SE with experience into this type of research. Pseudo-code would be fine, but I really don't want to sit down with AI scripts and try to project them far out into the future. For those who might think that I'm trying to avoid doing research, I would merely say, I love doing research, but I could use some help on where to focus that research at the moment.
So to restate the question: Are there any writers here who can recommend good middle-ground resources that deal with the concepts of the philosophy and programming of artificial intelligence and/or systematic ethics?
Sorry if this is a strange question, and thank you to everyone who takes the time to consider it.