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  1. Digital suffering: why it's a problem and how to prevent it.Bradford Saad & Adam Bradley - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    As ever more advanced digital systems are created, it becomes increasingly likely that some of these systems will be digital minds, i.e. digital subjects of experience. With digital minds comes the risk of digital suffering. The problem of digital suffering is that of mitigating this risk. We argue that the problem of digital suffering is a high stakes moral problem and that formidable epistemic obstacles stand in the way of solving it. We then propose a strategy for solving it: Access (...)
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  • Sims and Vulnerability: On the Ethics of Creating Emulated Minds.Bartek Chomanski - forthcoming - Science and Engineering Ethics.
    It might become possible to build artificial minds with the capacity for experience. This raises a plethora of ethical issues, explored, among others, in the context of whole brain emulations (WBE). In this paper, I will take up the problem of vulnerability – given, for various reasons, less attention in the literature – that the conscious emulations will likely exhibit. Specifically, I will examine the role that vulnerability plays in generating ethical issues that may arise when dealing with WBEs. I (...)
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  • Robot rights in joint action.Guido Löhr - 2022 - In Vincent C. Müller (ed.), Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2021. Berlin, Germany:
    The claim I want to explore in this paper is simple. In social ontology, Margaret Gilbert, Abe Roth, Michael Bratman, Antonie Meijers, Facundo Alonso and others talk about rights or entitlements against other participants in joint action. I employ several intuition pumps to argue that we have reason to assume that such entitlements or rights can be ascribed even to non-sentient robots that we collaborate with. Importantly, such entitlements are primarily identified in terms of our normative discourse. Justified criticism, for (...)
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  • Basic issues in AI policy.Vincent C. Müller - 2022 - In Maria Amparo Grau-Ruiz (ed.), Interactive robotics: Legal, ethical, social and economic aspects. Springer. pp. 3-9.
    This extended abstract summarises some of the basic points of AI ethics and policy as they present themselves now. We explain the notion of AI, the main ethical issues in AI and the main policy aims and means.
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  • Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism.John Danaher - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (4):2023-2049.
    Can robots have significant moral status? This is an emerging topic of debate among roboticists and ethicists. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it presents a theory – ‘ethical behaviourism’ – which holds that robots can have significant moral status if they are roughly performatively equivalent to other entities that have significant moral status. This theory is then defended from seven objections. Second, taking this theoretical position onboard, it is argued that the performative threshold that robots need (...)
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  • Robot Betrayal: a guide to the ethics of robotic deception.John Danaher - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 22 (2):117-128.
    If a robot sends a deceptive signal to a human user, is this always and everywhere an unethical act, or might it sometimes be ethically desirable? Building upon previous work in robot ethics, this article tries to clarify and refine our understanding of the ethics of robotic deception. It does so by making three arguments. First, it argues that we need to distinguish between three main forms of robotic deception (external state deception; superficial state deception; and hidden state deception) in (...)
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  • What’s Wrong with Designing People to Serve?Bartek Chomanski - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (4):993-1015.
    In this paper I argue, contrary to recent literature, that it is unethical to create artificial agents possessing human-level intelligence that are programmed to be human beings’ obedient servants. In developing the argument, I concede that there are possible scenarios in which building such artificial servants is, on net, beneficial. I also concede that, on some conceptions of autonomy, it is possible to build human-level AI servants that will enjoy full-blown autonomy. Nonetheless, the main thrust of my argument is that, (...)
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  • Sims and Vulnerability: On the Ethics of Creating Emulated Minds.Bartlomiej Chomanski - 2022 - Science and Engineering Ethics 28 (6):1-17.
    It might become possible to build artificial minds with the capacity for experience. This raises a plethora of ethical issues, explored, among others, in the context of whole brain emulations (WBE). In this paper, I will take up the problem of vulnerability – given, for various reasons, less attention in the literature – that the conscious emulations will likely exhibit. Specifically, I will examine the role that vulnerability plays in generating ethical issues that may arise when dealing with WBEs. I (...)
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  • Liability for Robots: Sidestepping the Gaps.Bartek Chomanski - 2021 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):1013-1032.
    In this paper, I outline a proposal for assigning liability for autonomous machines modeled on the doctrine of respondeat superior. I argue that the machines’ users’ or designers’ liability should be determined by the manner in which the machines are created, which, in turn, should be responsive to considerations of the machines’ welfare interests. This approach has the twin virtues of promoting socially beneficial design of machines, and of taking their potential moral patiency seriously. I then argue for abandoning the (...)
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  • Acting like an algorithm: digital farming platforms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in.Michael Carolan - 2020 - Agriculture and Human Values 37 (4):1041-1053.
    This paper contributes to our understanding of farm data value chains with assistance from 54 semi-structured interviews and field notes from participant observations. Methodologically, it includes individuals, such as farmers, who hold well-known positionalities within digital agriculture spaces—platforms that include precision farming techniques, farm equipment built on machine learning architecture and algorithms, and robotics—while also including less visible elements and practices. The actors interviewed and materialities and performances observed thus came from spaces and places inhabited by, for example, farmers, crop (...)
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  • The Specter of Automation.Zachary Biondi - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (3):1093-1110.
    Karl Marx took technological development to be the heart of capitalism’s drive and, ultimately, its undoing. Machines are initially engineered to perform functions that otherwise would be performed by human workers. The economic logic pushed to its limits leads to the prospect of full automation: a world in which all labor required to meet human needs is superseded and performed by machines. To explore the future of automation, the paper considers a specific point of resemblance between human beings and machines: (...)
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  • Artificial Intelligence: Arguments for Catastrophic Risk.Adam Bales, William D'Alessandro & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (2):e12964.
    Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...)
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  • How to Treat Machines that Might Have Minds.Nicholas Agar - 2020 - Philosophy and Technology 33 (2):269-282.
    This paper offers practical advice about how to interact with machines that we have reason to believe could have minds. I argue that we should approach these interactions by assigning credences to judgements about whether the machines in question can think. We should treat the premises of philosophical arguments about whether these machines can think as offering evidence that may increase or reduce these credences. I describe two cases in which you should refrain from doing as your favored philosophical view (...)
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  • The Moral Status of Social Robots: A Pragmatic Approach.Paul Showler - 2024 - Philosophy and Technology 37 (2):1-22.
    Debates about the moral status of social robots (SRs) currently face a second-order, or metatheoretical impasse. On the one hand, moral individualists argue that the moral status of SRs depends on their possession of morally relevant properties. On the other hand, moral relationalists deny that we ought to attribute moral status on the basis of the properties that SRs instantiate, opting instead for other modes of reflection and critique. This paper develops and defends a pragmatic approach which aims to reconcile (...)
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  • The Weirdness of the World.Eric Schwitzgebel - 2024 - Princeton University Press.
    How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre—and why that’s a good thing Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental (...)
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  • A fictional dualism model of social robots.Paula Sweeney - 2021 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):465-472.
    In this paper I propose a Fictional Dualism model of social robots. The model helps us to understand the human emotional reaction to social robots and also acts as a guide for us in determining the significance of that emotional reaction, enabling us to better define the moral and legislative rights of social robots within our society. I propose a distinctive position that allows us to accept that robots are tools, that our emotional reaction to them can be important to (...)
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  • Danaher’s Ethical Behaviourism: An Adequate Guide to Assessing the Moral Status of a Robot?Jilles Smids - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (5):2849-2866.
    This paper critically assesses John Danaher’s ‘ethical behaviourism’, a theory on how the moral status of robots should be determined. The basic idea of this theory is that a robot’s moral status is determined decisively on the basis of its observable behaviour. If it behaves sufficiently similar to some entity that has moral status, such as a human or an animal, then we should ascribe the same moral status to the robot as we do to this human or animal. The (...)
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  • Sentientism, Motivation, and Philosophical Vulcans.Luke Roelofs - 2023 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (2):301-323.
    If moral status depends on the capacity for consciousness, what kind of consciousness matters exactly? Two popular answers are that any kind of consciousness matters (Broad Sentientism), and that what matters is the capacity for pleasure and suffering (Narrow Sentientism). I argue that the broad answer is too broad, while the narrow answer is likely too narrow, as Chalmers has recently argued by appeal to ‘philosophical Vulcans’. I defend a middle position, Motivational Sentientism, on which what matters is motivating consciousness: (...)
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  • Meaning in Life in AI Ethics—Some Trends and Perspectives.Sven Nyholm & Markus Rüther - 2023 - Philosophy and Technology 36 (2):1-24.
    In this paper, we discuss the relation between recent philosophical discussions about meaning in life (from authors like Susan Wolf, Thaddeus Metz, and others) and the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). Our goal is twofold, namely, to argue that considering the axiological category of meaningfulness can enrich AI ethics, on the one hand, and to portray and evaluate the small, but growing literature that already exists on the relation between meaning in life and AI ethics, on the other hand. We (...)
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  • Can we design artificial persons without being manipulative?Maciej Musiał - forthcoming - AI and Society:1-10.
    If we could build artificial persons with a moral status comparable to this of a typical human being, how should we design those APs in the right way? This question has been addressed mainly in terms of designing APs devoted to being servants and debated in reference to their autonomy and the harm they might experience. Recently, it has been argued that even if developing AP servants would neither deprive them of autonomy nor cause any net harm, then developing such (...)
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  • Moral Status for Malware! The Difficulty of Defining Advanced Artificial Intelligence.Miranda Mowbray - 2021 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 30 (3):517-528.
    The suggestion has been made that future advanced artificial intelligence (AI) that passes some consciousness-related criteria should be treated as having moral status, and therefore, humans would have an ethical obligation to consider its well-being. In this paper, the author discusses the extent to which software and robots already pass proposed criteria for consciousness; and argues against the moral status for AI on the grounds that human malware authors may design malware to fake consciousness. In fact, the article warns that (...)
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  • On the moral status of social robots: considering the consciousness criterion.Kestutis Mosakas - 2021 - AI and Society 36 (2):429-443.
    While philosophers have been debating for decades on whether different entities—including severely disabled human beings, embryos, animals, objects of nature, and even works of art—can legitimately be considered as having moral status, this question has gained a new dimension in the wake of artificial intelligence (AI). One of the more imminent concerns in the context of AI is that of the moral rights and status of social robots, such as robotic caregivers and artificial companions, that are built to interact with (...)
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  • Will intelligent machines become moral patients?Parisa Moosavi - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    This paper addresses a question about the moral status of Artificial Intelligence (AI): will AIs ever become moral patients? I argue that, while it is in principle possible for an intelligent machine to be a moral patient, there is no good reason to believe this will in fact happen. I start from the plausible assumption that traditional artifacts do not meet a minimal necessary condition of moral patiency: having a good of one's own. I then argue that intelligent machines are (...)
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  • Is it time for robot rights? Moral status in artificial entities.Vincent C. Müller - 2021 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):579–587.
    Some authors have recently suggested that it is time to consider rights for robots. These suggestions are based on the claim that the question of robot rights should not depend on a standard set of conditions for ‘moral status’; but instead, the question is to be framed in a new way, by rejecting the is/ought distinction, making a relational turn, or assuming a methodological behaviourism. We try to clarify these suggestions and to show their highly problematic consequences. While we find (...)
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  • From computerised thing to digital being: mission (Im)possible?Julija Kiršienė, Edita Gruodytė & Darius Amilevičius - 2021 - AI and Society 36 (2):547-560.
    Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the main drivers of what has been described as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, as well as the most innovative technology developed to date. It is a pervasive transformative innovation, which needs a new approach. In 2017, the European Parliament introduced the notion of the “electronic person”, which sparked huge debates in philosophical, legal, technological, and other academic settings. The issues related to AI should be examined from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this paper, we examine (...)
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  • Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligence: Citizenship as the Exception to the Rule.Tyler L. Jaynes - 2020 - AI and Society 35 (2):343-354.
    The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, (...)
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  • “I Am Not Your Robot:” the metaphysical challenge of humanity’s AIS ownership.Tyler L. Jaynes - 2021 - AI and Society 37 (4):1689-1702.
    Despite the reality that self-learning artificial intelligence systems (SLAIS) are gaining in sophistication, humanity’s focus regarding SLAIS-human interactions are unnervingly centred upon transnational commercial sectors and, most generally, around issues of intellectual property law. But as SLAIS gain greater environmental interaction capabilities in digital spaces, or the ability to self-author code to drive their development as algorithmic models, a concern arises as to whether a system that displays a “deceptive” level of human-like engagement with users in our physical world ought (...)
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  • The Prospects of Artificial Consciousness: Ethical Dimensions and Concerns.Elisabeth Hildt - 2023 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2):58-71.
    Can machines be conscious and what would be the ethical implications? This article gives an overview of current robotics approaches toward machine consciousness and considers factors that hamper an understanding of machine consciousness. After addressing the epistemological question of how we would know whether a machine is conscious and discussing potential advantages of potential future machine consciousness, it outlines the role of consciousness for ascribing moral status. As machine consciousness would most probably differ considerably from human consciousness, several complex questions (...)
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  • The Moral Consideration of Artificial Entities: A Literature Review.Jamie Harris & Jacy Reese Anthis - 2021 - Science and Engineering Ethics 27 (4):1-95.
    Ethicists, policy-makers, and the general public have questioned whether artificial entities such as robots warrant rights or other forms of moral consideration. There is little synthesis of the research on this topic so far. We identify 294 relevant research or discussion items in our literature review of this topic. There is widespread agreement among scholars that some artificial entities could warrant moral consideration in the future, if not also the present. The reasoning varies, such as concern for the effects on (...)
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  • Are superintelligent robots entitled to human rights?John-Stewart Gordon - 2022 - Ratio 35 (3):181-193.
    Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 3, Page 181-193, September 2022.
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  • Artificial moral and legal personhood.John-Stewart Gordon - forthcoming - AI and Society:1-15.
    This paper considers the hotly debated issue of whether one should grant moral and legal personhood to intelligent robots once they have achieved a certain standard of sophistication based on such criteria as rationality, autonomy, and social relations. The starting point for the analysis is the European Parliament’s resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics and its recommendation that robots be granted legal status and electronic personhood. The resolution is discussed against the background of the so-called Robotics Open Letter, which (...)
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  • Why the Epistemic Objection Against Using Sentience as Criterion of Moral Status is Flawed.Leonard Dung - 2022 - Science and Engineering Ethics 28 (6):1-15.
    According to a common view, sentience is necessary and sufficient for moral status. In other words, whether a being has intrinsic moral relevance is determined by its capacity for conscious experience. The _epistemic objection_ derives from our profound uncertainty about sentience. According to this objection, we cannot use sentience as a _criterion_ to ascribe moral status in practice because we won’t know in the foreseeable future which animals and AI systems are sentient while ethical questions regarding the possession of moral (...)
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  • Understanding Artificial Agency.Leonard Dung - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    Which artificial intelligence (AI) systems are agents? To answer this question, I propose a multidimensional account of agency. According to this account, a system's agency profile is jointly determined by its level of goal-directedness and autonomy as well as is abilities for directly impacting the surrounding world, long-term planning and acting for reasons. Rooted in extant theories of agency, this account enables fine-grained, nuanced comparative characterizations of artificial agency. I show that this account has multiple important virtues and is more (...)
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  • How to deal with risks of AI suffering.Leonard Dung - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    1. 1.1. Suffering is bad. This is why, ceteris paribus, there are strong moral reasons to prevent suffering. Moreover, typically, those moral reasons are stronger when the amount of suffering at st...
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  • Designing AI with Rights, Consciousness, Self-Respect, and Freedom.Eric Schwitzgebel & Mara Garza - 2020 - In Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. New York, NY, USA: pp. 459-479.
    We propose four policies of ethical design of human-grade Artificial Intelligence. Two of our policies are precautionary. Given substantial uncertainty both about ethical theory and about the conditions under which AI would have conscious experiences, we should be cautious in our handling of cases where different moral theories or different theories of consciousness would produce very different ethical recommendations. Two of our policies concern respect and freedom. If we design AI that deserves moral consideration equivalent to that of human beings, (...)
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  • Implementational Considerations for Digital Consciousness.Derek Shiller - manuscript
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