Faultless responsibility: on the nature and allocation of moral responsibility for distributed moral actions
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The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments, it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of people working as a team thanks to a software platform), may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e. morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs, and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence and common knowledge from epistemic logic. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The ethical impact of data science’.
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Even where problems are recognised in AI systems, they can rarely be traced back to a single team member or action; responsibility must be assigned across a network of actors.
“Even where problems are recognised, they can rarely be traced back to a single team member or action; 43 responsibility must be assigned across a network of actors that influenced the system's design, training, and configuration.”
From Principles alone cannot guarantee ethical AI (2019) · cites this paper as [43]
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- Authors
- Floridi, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Floridi, Luciano
- ORCID
- Floridi, Luciano
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2016-12-28
- Volume
- 374
- Issue
- 2083
- Pages
- 20160112
- ISSN
- 1364-503X (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2962
- OpenAlex
- W2553338792
- Cited by
- 227
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 17.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Alan Turing Institute (TU/B/000055)
- Università degli Studi di Milano
- University of Oxford
- Universidade do Minho
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N02334X/1, EP/N023013/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Ethics in Business and Education
- Keywords
- allocation of responsibility, artificial agents, software platform, strict liability, backpropagation, common knowledge, intentionality
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Models, Theoretical, Morals, Social Responsibility
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