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About

Markus Kneer is a philosopher and empirical researcher whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of artificial intelligence, moral psychology, and experimental philosophy. His research primarily investigates how ordinary people conceptualize the moral and creative capacities of AI systems — questions that carry profound implications as intelligent machines become increasingly embedded in everyday life. Kneer's most influential contribution, "Can Artificial Intelligence Make Art?" (2022, 76 citations), used large-scale experiments to probe folk intuitions about AI creativity, revealing nuanced public attitudes toward machine-generated artwork and artistic agency. Complementing this, his investigations into AI culpability — including "Guilty Artificial Minds" (2021, 45 citations) and "Playing the Blame Game with Robots" (2021, 27 citations) — demonstrate that people are surprisingly willing to attribute moral blame and even criminal intent (*mens rea*) to AI agents, a finding with serious implications for legal accountability. His work on robot deception (32 citations) further extends this framework to questions of honesty and lying. Perhaps most striking is Kneer's cross-cultural research on "responsibility gaps," examining how retributive instincts persist even when no human actor is clearly at fault. Spanning participants from the US, Japan, and Germany, this work underscores the global urgency of his questions. With over 200 cumulative citations, Kneer is an emerging voice shaping how philosophy confronts the AI age.