John Licato

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of South Florida, Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne

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About

John Licato is a leading researcher at the intersection of artificial intelligence, moral philosophy, and cognitive science, with a primary focus on machine consciousness, ethical AI, and formal reasoning. His seminal work, "Real robots that pass human tests of self-consciousness" (2015, 84 citations), argues that self-consciousness is a prerequisite for moral competence—a robot cannot be truly ethical without understanding its own obligations. This foundational contribution has shaped debates on machine moral agency. Licato also explores the gap between formal rules and ethical intent, as in "Probing formal/informal misalignment with the loophole task" (2018), where he identifies how autonomous agents might exploit rule ambiguities to violate ethical principles. His research on "Constraints on freely chosen action for moral robots" (2015) further examines the interplay of consciousness and control in robotic decision-making. Notably, Licato applies formal logic to complex human behavior, as in "Formalizing Deceptive Reasoning in Breaking Bad" (2015), using the cognitive event calculus to model nested beliefs and deceptive planning. With a career dedicated to ensuring AI systems are both intelligent and morally accountable, Licato’s work is essential reading for anyone interested in building robots that can reason ethically in a complex social world.