Beyond Personhood: Agency, Accountability, and the Limits of Anthropomorphic Ethical Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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1. Verfasser: Dai, Jessica
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Dai, Jessica
author_facet Dai, Jessica
contents What is agency, and why does it matter? In this work, we draw from the political science and philosophy literature and give two competing visions of what it means to be an (ethical) agent. The first view, which we term mechanistic, is commonly--and implicitly--assumed in AI research, yet it is a fundamentally limited means to understand the ethical characteristics of AI. Under the second view, which we term volitional, AI can no longer be considered an ethical agent. We discuss the implications of each of these views for two critical questions: first, what the ideal system ought to look like, and second, how accountability may be achieved. In light of this discussion, we ultimately argue that, in the context of ethically-significant behavior, AI should be viewed not as an agent but as the outcome of political processes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_13861
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Personhood: Agency, Accountability, and the Limits of Anthropomorphic Ethical Analysis
Dai, Jessica
Computers and Society
What is agency, and why does it matter? In this work, we draw from the political science and philosophy literature and give two competing visions of what it means to be an (ethical) agent. The first view, which we term mechanistic, is commonly--and implicitly--assumed in AI research, yet it is a fundamentally limited means to understand the ethical characteristics of AI. Under the second view, which we term volitional, AI can no longer be considered an ethical agent. We discuss the implications of each of these views for two critical questions: first, what the ideal system ought to look like, and second, how accountability may be achieved. In light of this discussion, we ultimately argue that, in the context of ethically-significant behavior, AI should be viewed not as an agent but as the outcome of political processes.
title Beyond Personhood: Agency, Accountability, and the Limits of Anthropomorphic Ethical Analysis
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.13861