The Moral Consideration of Artificial Entities: A Literature Review

Abstract

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 artificial entities and concern for the effects on human society. Beyond the conventional consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethicist ethical frameworks, some scholars encourage “information ethics” and “social-relational” approaches, though there are opportunities for more in-depth ethical research on the nuances of moral consideration of artificial entities. There is limited relevant empirical data collection, primarily in a few psychological studies on current moral and social attitudes of humans towards robots and other artificial entities. This suggests an important gap for psychological, sociological, economic, and organizational research on how artificial entities will be integrated into society and the factors that will determine how the interests of artificial entities are considered.

Theory of Mind and Preference Learning at the Interface of Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and AI: A Review

“…An AI endowed with ToM abilities would be considered a full ethical agent, but this may suggest that the AI should have moral patiency and as such deserving of moral consideration. Harris and Anthis ( 2021 ) survey the literature on the moral considerations of artificial entities.…”

Science Fiction Turned Fact (Again): Speculative Bioethical Discourse as a Crucial Tool for Proactively Assessing the Risks of Future Technologies

“…[38,39] One such set of rights is presented by Jaynes, [31, p 348-351] who describes briefly why protections towards speech, life, property ownership, legal representation, and suits of "arbitrary" nature are necessary given how the nature of AIS differs from that of the human intelligence they are oftentimes modelled after. Other arguments, like those of David J. Gunkel, may show scepticism surrounding the "need" of AIS to attain legal rights and duties or the need to ensure a "moral" framework within these systems [38,[40][41][42][43] as pre-requisite conditions for such protections.…”

Challenging the Neo-Anthropocentric Relational Approach to Robot Rights

“…The time has come to consider how to categorize theories belonging to what is often referred to as the “relational turn” 2 in robot ethics ( Gerdes, 2016 ). The goal of what follows is not to examine whether or not “relationalism” ( Coeckelbergh, 2010 ), “social-relational ethics” ( Coeckelbergh, 2010 ; Gunkel, 2018b ; Harris and Anthis, 2021 ), or “ecological relationalism” ( Jones, 2013 ) is right, wrong, beneficial, etc. Neither is it a deep philosophical examination of the nuances and differences between the various manifestations of relationalism beyond what is required to establish the fundamental approach shared by these theorists.…”

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