Artificial virtue: the machine question and perceptions of moral character in artificial moral agents

The Moral Consideration of Artificial Entities: A Literature Review

“…These scholars defend various criteria as crucial for determining whether artificial entities warrant moral consideration. Sentience or consciousness seem to be most frequently invoked (Andreotta, 2020 ; Bostrom, 2014 ; Himma, 2003 ; Johnson & Verdicchio, 2018 ; Mackenzie, 2014 ; Mosakas, 2020 ; Tomasik, 2014 ; Torrance, 2008 ; Yampolskiy, 2017 ), but other proposed criteria include the capacities for interests (Basl, 2014 ; Neely, 2014 ), autonomy (Calverley, 2011 ; Gualeni, 2020 ), self-control (Wareham, 2013 ), rationality (Laukyte, 2017 ), integrity (Gualeni, 2020 ), dignity (Bess, 2018 ), moral reasoning (Malle, 2016 ), and virtue (Gamez et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Most children referred to the animated agent in their evaluations Friedman ( 2019 ) This article takes a “human perspective” and “relational account” to examine the moral consideration of social robots, arguing that “what matters is not whether robots are actually phenomenally conscious… but whether we view them as possessing the property of phenomenal consciousness.” It argues for “granting negative rights to robots” to protect “the moral fibre and quality of human societies” Galanter ( 2020 ) Galanter uses their theory of “complexism,” alongside various theories from moral philosophy and research on consciousness, to consider moral consideration of artificial entities. Galanter concludes that, “there is nothing that presently proves machine sentience is impossible… As such, a sense of due diligence should oblige us to extend patiency to apparently aware machines as our own moral obligation” Gamez et al ( 2020 ) The authors focus mostly on moral agency but also discuss of moral patiency. They argue that, for artificial entities “with whom we interact socially, insofar as their process of learning to behave ethically models the acquisition of virtue… from the perspective of virtue ethics this amounts to being a full moral agent, or close enough” Gerdes ( 2015 ) Gerdes examines “human technology relations through the lens of sci-fi movies.” Steven Spielberg’s film Artificial Intelligence apparently explores ideas comparable both to Gunkel’s social-relational perspective and Turkle’s personhood perspective on granting moral consideration to artificial entities Gerdes ( 2016 ) Gerdes “stick[s] to a human centered framework and introduce[s] a moral philosophical perspective, primarily based on Kant’s Tugendlehre and his conception of duties as well as the Formula of Humanity, which also holds a relational perspective.” Gerdes comments that “destruction” or “violent and cruel” treatment of animals, nature, and inanimate objects “is always only a duty of the human being to himself” Gittinger ( 2019 ) Gittinger discusses several ethical issues, focusing briefly on robot rights, with reference to science fiction.…”

Is it time for robot rights? Moral status in artificial entities

“…P. Gamez et al propose to "investigate the 'machine question' by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character?" (Gamez et al, 2020) (cf. Tavani, 2018.…”

Perspectives about artificial moral agents

“…In the scientific literature, several projects attempting to build artificial morality with reference to human morality have been reported. Scholars across different disciplines are exploring the applicability of different branches of moral philosophy, such as duty theories [10,37,57,58,73], consequentialist theories [2,65,79], or virtue ethics [14,31,32,74], as well as combinations of several moral theories [12,18,71]. Moreover, important work on the modeling of artificial morality based on empirical evidence of human morality, such as the Moral Machine Experiment, has also been reported [13,19,54].…”