Responsibility Gaps and Self-interest Bias: People Attribute Moral Responsibility to AI for Their Own but not Others' Transgressions

Abstract

In the last decade, the ambiguity and difficulty of responsibility attribution to AI and human stakeholders (i.e., responsibility gaps) has been increasingly relevant and discussed in extreme cases (e.g., autonomous weapons). On top of related philosophical debates, the current research provides empirical evidence on the importance of bridging responsibility gaps from a psychological and motivational perspective. In three pre-registered studies (N = 1259), people judged themselves (versus others; Studies 1 and 2) and ingroup (versus outgroup; Study 3) members more leniently for identical transgressions. Moreover, such self-interest bias in hybrid transgressions was accounted for by the flexible responsibility attribution to AI (i.e., ascribing more responsibility to AI when judging the self rather than others; Studies 1 and 2). The findings suggest that people may dynamically exploit the moral “wiggle room” in hybrid moral situations and reason about AI's responsibility to serve their self-interest.