Bonnefon, J., Rahwan, I., & Shariff, A.
(2023, September 22).
Abstract
Moral psychology was shaped around three categories of agents and patients: humans, other animals, and supernatural beings. Rapid progress in Artificial Intelligence has introduced a fourth category for our moral psychology to deal with: intelligent machines. Machines can perform as moral agents, making decisions that affect the outcomes of human patients, or solving moral dilemmas without human supervi- sion. Machines can be as perceived moral patients, whose outcomes can be affected by human decisions, with important consequences for human-machine cooperation. Machines can be moral proxies, that human agents and patients send as their delegates to a moral interaction, or use as a disguise in these interactions. Here we review the experimental literature on machines as moral agents, moral patients, and moral proxies, with a focus on recent findings and the open questions that they suggest.
Conclusion
We have not addressed every issue at the intersection of AI and moral psychology. Questions about how people perceive AI plagiarism, about how the presence of AI agents can reduce or enhance trust between groups of humans, about how sexbots will alter intimate human relations, are the subjects of active research programs. Many more yet unasked questions will only be provoked as new AI abilities develops. Given the pace of this change, any review paper will only be a snapshot. Nevertheless, the very recent and rapid emergence of AI-driven technology is colliding with moral intuitions forged by culture and evolution over the span of millennia. Grounding an imaginative speculation about the possibilities of AI with a thorough understanding of the structure of human moral psychology will help prepare for a world shared with, and complicated by, machines.
