Robots as moral agents: Moral responsibility in the absence of intentionality?

Abstract

In the era of renewed fascination with AI and robotics, one needs to address questions related to their societal impact, particularly in terms of moral responsibility and intentionality. In three vignette-based experiments (total N = 96) we investigated whether the consequences of a robot or human’s actions, influenced participant’s intentionality and moral responsibility ratings. Moral responsibility ratings were higher for negative consequences than positive consequences, for the robot (Experiment1 p = .03, Experiment2 p = .003), and human (Experiment3 p < .001). However, for the robot, there was no difference in intentionality ratings based on the valence of the consequences (Experiment1 p = 0.91, Experiment2 p = .64). Whereas, for the human, intentionality ratings were higher for negative consequences than positive consequences (Experiment3, p =.005). We suggest that this could be due to intentionality being more easily dissociated from moral responsibility when evaluating robot actions, compared to human actions.