Delegating Responsibilities to Intelligent Autonomous Systems: Challenges and Benefits

Area of Science:

• Artificial Intelligence Ethics
• Techno-social Systems
• Moral Responsibility

Background:

• Increasing autonomy and adaptability of AI systems challenge traditional notions of moral responsibility.
• The delegation of responsibilities to intelligent autonomous agents raises significant ethical questions.
• Existing discourse on AI ethics grapples with distributed responsibility and ethical AI design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the evolving discourse on delegating responsibilities to intelligent autonomous agents.
• To propose a functionalist perspective for understanding moral responsibility in AI.
• To advocate for an "AI ethical by design" approach.

Main Methods:

• Synthesizing recent developments in AI ethics.
• Adopting a functionalist perspective to view responsibility as a distributed role.
• Examining Basti and Vitiello's implementation of "AI ethical by design" using Deontic Higher-Order Logic.

Main Results:

• Moral responsibility can be viewed as a role distributed among human and artificial agents within socio-technical systems.
• AI can function as artificial moral agents by learning ethical guidelines and assessing decisions.
• The proposed functionalist approach provides a practical framework for AI ethics.

Conclusions:

• The functionalist perspective offers a practical framework for navigating AI ethics.
• An "AI ethical by design" approach is crucial given AI's speed and scale.
• Responsibility in AI systems is inherently distributed, shared, and dynamic.