Can robots be responsible moral agents? And why should we care?
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This principle highlights the need for humans to accept responsibility for robot behaviour and in that it is commendable. However, it raises further questions about legal and moral responsibility. The issues considered here are (i) the reasons for assuming that humans and not robots are responsible agents, (ii) whether it is sufficient to design robots to comply with existing laws and human rights and (iii) the implications, for robot deployment, of the assumption that robots are not morally responsible.
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Robot speech may lead users to attribute robots with intelligence, social agency, moral agency, and a uniquely potent combination of these factors.
“Because robot speech may lead users to attribute robots with intelligence [6, 14], social agency [28], moral agency [16, 52, 57], and the uniquely potent combination of these factors [27]”
From Robots for Social Justice (R4SJ): Toward a More Equitable Practice of Human-Robot Interaction (2024) · cites this paper as [57]
Section 1.2.1 says robots can be given the appearance of competent social actors, and the Summary warns that robots can create an illusion of understanding. These passages support the possibility of users overestimating robots’ social competence, but they do not say that robot speech leads users to attribute moral agency to them. (LLM, conf=0.76)
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Flagged first, then by citations
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Critiquing the Reasons for Making Artificial Moral Agents
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Robots for Social Justice (R4SJ): Toward a More Equitable Practice of Human-Robot Interaction
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Artificial moral agents: should machines take ethical responsibility?
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- Authors
- Sharkey, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Sheffield (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Sharkey, Amanda
- ORCID
- Sharkey, Amanda
- Venue
- Connection Science
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2017-05-30
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 210-216
- ISSN
- 0954-0091 (ISSN-L)
- 1360-0494
- OpenAlex
- W2617359327
- Cited by
- 36
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 3.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Connection Science (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Literary and Philosophical Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Keywords
- legal responsibility, moral responsibility, human-robot interaction, robot design, human rights compliance, robot deployment, robot ethics
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