Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Many Hands

Poel, I.R. van de; Royakkers, Lambertus Maarten Maria; Zwart, Sjoerd D.

doi:10.4324/9781315734217

Cited by 81 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…They may, for instance, be involved in projects connecting scientists and their academic institutions and technological companies operating on the market. As seen above, this may create problems for the attribution of passive responsibility, as in case something goes wrong, it may be easy (and sometimes legitimate) for individual engineers to shift responsibility to other agents or institutions in their network, and it sometimes may be even the case that nobody can legitimately be held responsible for one specific unwanted event (Van de Poel et al, 2015). What is often overlooked is that the networked nature of the engineering work may also create issues with the attribution of active responsibility.…”

Section: Active Responsibility Gapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four Responsibility Gaps with Artificial Intelligence: Why they Matter and How to Address them

2021

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The notion of “responsibility gap” with artificial intelligence (AI) was originally introduced in the philosophical debate to indicate the concern that “learning automata” may make more difficult or impossible to attribute moral culpability to persons for untoward events. Building on literature in moral and legal philosophy, and ethics of technology, the paper proposes a broader and more comprehensive analysis of the responsibility gap. The responsibility gap, it is argued, is not one problem but a set of at least four interconnected problems – gaps in culpability, moral and public accountability, active responsibility—caused by different sources, some technical, other organisational, legal, ethical, and societal. Responsibility gaps may also happen with non-learning systems. The paper clarifies which aspect of AI may cause which gap in which form of responsibility, and why each of these gaps matter. It proposes a critical review of partial and non-satisfactory attempts to address the responsibility gap: those which present it as a new and intractable problem (“fatalism”), those which dismiss it as a false problem (“deflationism”), and those which reduce it to only one of its dimensions or sources and/or present it as a problem that can be solved by simply introducing new technical and/or legal tools (“solutionism”). The paper also outlines a more comprehensive approach to address the responsibility gaps with AI in their entirety, based on the idea of designing socio-technical systems for “meaningful human control", that is systems aligned with the relevant human reasons and capacities.

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Section: Active Responsibility Gapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four Responsibility Gaps with Artificial Intelligence: Why they Matter and How to Address them

2021

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“…Dworkin 1981; Van de Poel et al 2015). Forward-looking moral responsibility is also called active moral responsibility and the idea that people are responsible to see to it that a certain state of affair is realized.…”

Section: Design and Moral Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Food Warden: An Exploration of Issues in Distributing Responsibilities for Safe-by-Design Synthetic Biology Applications

2017

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The Safe-by-Design approach in synthetic biology holds the promise of designing the building blocks of life in an organism guided by the value of safety. This paves a new way for using biotechnologies safely. However, the Safe-by-Design approach moves the bulk of the responsibility for safety to the actors in the research and development phase. Also, it assumes that safety can be defined and understood by all stakeholders in the same way. These assumptions are problematic and might actually undermine safety. This research explores these assumptions through the use of a Group Decision Room. In this set up, anonymous and non-anonymous deliberation methods are used for different stakeholders to exchange views. During the session, a potential synthetic biology application is used as a case for investigation: the Food Warden, a biosensor contained in meat packaging for indicating the freshness of meat. Participants discuss what potential issues might arise, how responsibilities should be distributed in a forward-looking way, who is to blame if something would go wrong. They are also asked what safety and responsibility mean at different phases, and for different stakeholders. The results of the session are not generalizable, but provide valuable insights. Issues of safety cannot all be taken care of in the R&D phase. Also, when things go wrong, there are proximal and distal causes to consider. In addition, capacities of actors play an important role in defining their responsibilities. Last but not least, this research provides a new perspective on the role of instruction manuals in achieving safety.

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“…A second way in which philosophers of technology can contribute to policy is by proposing distributions of responsibility for risks and harms resulting from the development and use of technologies (Doorn 2010 ;Van de Poel et al 2015 ). It is part of the expertise of ethicists to analyze various notions of responsibility and to make and justify attributions of (moral) responsibility.…”

Section: Policy-oriented Philosophical Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructive Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation

Brey

2016

Philosophy of Engineering and Technology

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This essay argues for a new turn after the empirical turn in the philosophy of technology: the societal turn, which is the turn from refl ective philosophy of technology (academic philosophy concerned with analysis and understanding) to constructive philosophy of technology (philosophy that is directly involved in solving practical problems in society). The essay aims to describe in detail what a constructive approach would look like and how it could be achieved. It claims that at least in the European Union, the conditions for a constructive philosophy of technology are favorable, due to the emergence in both policy and academics of the notion of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). It then goes on to describe how a constructive philosophy of technology can contribute to better technology development, better technology policy and better implementation and use of technology, through engineering-oriented, policy-oriented and use-oriented approaches to research.

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Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Many Hands

Cited by 81 publications

References 0 publications

Four Responsibility Gaps with Artificial Intelligence: Why they Matter and How to Address them

Four Responsibility Gaps with Artificial Intelligence: Why they Matter and How to Address them

The Food Warden: An Exploration of Issues in Distributing Responsibilities for Safe-by-Design Synthetic Biology Applications

Constructive Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation

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