Teemu Saikkonen
Papers
4
Total Citations
25
H-Index
3
About
Teemu Saikkonen is a leading voice in the emerging field of moral psychology for artificial agents, exploring how human moral intuition grapples with non-human entities. His research centers on the cognitive and ethical challenges posed by robots and AI, revealing that our evolved moral machinery struggles to categorize these new agents. Saikkonen’s major contribution is demonstrating a counterintuitive “innocence over utilitarianism” effect: in moral dilemmas, people hold robots to *higher* deontological standards than humans, paradoxically expecting them to avoid causing harm even when it maximizes overall good. This finding, detailed across eight experiments with over 3,700 participants, challenges prior assumptions that robots are always expected to be coldly utilitarian. His two-part chapter series, “Moral Psychology and Artificial Agents,” provides a foundational framework for understanding these phenomena, arguing that robots occupy a “new ontological category” that defies our natural cognitive templates for animals, tools, or humans. With a growing citation footprint, Saikkonen’s work is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of moral philosophy, cognitive science, and robotics.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Moral Psychology and Artificial Agents (Part Two)8 citations · 2020
- 3Moral Psychology and Artificial Agents (Part One)5 citations · 2020
- 4