AI, agency and responsibility: the VW fraud case and beyond
Open accessAbstract
The concept of agency as applied to technological artifacts has become an object of heated debate in the context of AI research because some AI researchers ascribe to programs the type of agency traditionally associated with humans. Confusion about agency is at the root of misconceptions about the possibilities for future AI. We introduce the concept of a triadic agency that includes the causal agency of artifacts and the intentional agency of humans to better describe what happens in AI as it functions in real-world contexts. We use the VW emission fraud case to explain triadic agency since in this case a technological artifact, namely software, was an essential part of the wrongdoing and the software might be said to have agency in the wrongdoing. We then extend the case to include futuristic AI, imagining AI that becomes more and more autonomous.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Ethics in AI has become a real concern for AI researchers and practitioners alike.
“With a number of mishaps in the real world [31, 80], ethics in AI has become a real concern for AI researchers and practitioners alike.”
From Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd): a high-level academic and industry note 2021 (2022) · cites this paper as [31]
Current generative AI models are only causal, and not intentional, agents.
“as current generative AI models are only causal, and not intentional, agents (Johnson and Verdicchio, 2019).”
From On the creativity of large language models (2025) · cites this paper as Johnson and Verdicchio, 2019
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 35 · Cited by 79
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Latour B (1996) On actor-network theory: a few clarifications. Sozi- ale Welt 47(4):369-381
- Authors
- Johnson, D. G., & Verdicchio, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- University of the West of Scotland (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Verdicchio, Mario
- Venue
- AI & SOCIETY
- Published
- 2018-01-11
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 639-647
- ISSN
- 0951-5666 (ISSN-L)
- 1435-5655
- OpenAlex
- W2783507141
- Cited by
- 79
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 11.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- AI & Society (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- The UWS Academic Portal (University of the West of Scotland) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Aisberg (University of Bergamo) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Literary and Philosophical Studies
- Keywords
- causal agency, intentional agency, autonomous AI systems, AI ethics, agency attribution
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
