Robots, Chatbots, Self-Driving Cars: Perceptions of Mind and Morality Across Artificial Intelligences

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ladak, Ali, Wilks, Matti, Loughnan, Steve, Anthis, Jacy Reese
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ladak, Ali
Wilks, Matti
Loughnan, Steve
Anthis, Jacy Reese
author_facet Ladak, Ali
Wilks, Matti
Loughnan, Steve
Anthis, Jacy Reese
contents AI systems have rapidly advanced, diversified, and proliferated, but our knowledge of people's perceptions of mind and morality in them is limited, despite its importance for outcomes such as whether people trust AIs and how they assign responsibility for AI-caused harms. In a preregistered online study, 975 participants rated 26 AI and non-AI entities. Overall, AIs were perceived to have low-to-moderate agency (e.g., planning, acting), between inanimate objects and ants, and low experience (e.g., sensing, feeling). For example, ChatGPT was rated only as capable of feeling pleasure and pain as a rock. The analogous moral faculties, moral agency (doing right or wrong) and moral patiency (being treated rightly or wrongly) were higher and more varied, particularly moral agency: The highest-rated AI, a Tesla Full Self-Driving car, was rated as morally responsible for harm as a chimpanzee. We discuss how design choices can help manage perceptions, particularly in high-stakes moral contexts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_18683
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robots, Chatbots, Self-Driving Cars: Perceptions of Mind and Morality Across Artificial Intelligences
Ladak, Ali
Wilks, Matti
Loughnan, Steve
Anthis, Jacy Reese
Human-Computer Interaction
AI systems have rapidly advanced, diversified, and proliferated, but our knowledge of people's perceptions of mind and morality in them is limited, despite its importance for outcomes such as whether people trust AIs and how they assign responsibility for AI-caused harms. In a preregistered online study, 975 participants rated 26 AI and non-AI entities. Overall, AIs were perceived to have low-to-moderate agency (e.g., planning, acting), between inanimate objects and ants, and low experience (e.g., sensing, feeling). For example, ChatGPT was rated only as capable of feeling pleasure and pain as a rock. The analogous moral faculties, moral agency (doing right or wrong) and moral patiency (being treated rightly or wrongly) were higher and more varied, particularly moral agency: The highest-rated AI, a Tesla Full Self-Driving car, was rated as morally responsible for harm as a chimpanzee. We discuss how design choices can help manage perceptions, particularly in high-stakes moral contexts.
title Robots, Chatbots, Self-Driving Cars: Perceptions of Mind and Morality Across Artificial Intelligences
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18683