Open AccessArtificial Moral Patients: Mentality, Intentionality, and Systematicity
Author(s) -
Howard Nye,
Tugba Yoldas
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international review of information ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2563-5638
DOI - 10.29173/irie418
Subject(s) - harm , beneficence , intentionality , psychology , moral reasoning , social psychology , epistemology , autonomy , law , political science , philosophy
In this paper, we defend three claims about what it will take for an AI system to be a basic moral patient to whom we can owe duties of non-maleficence not to harm her and duties of beneficence to benefit her: (1) Moral patients are mental patients; (2) Mental patients are true intentional systems; and (3) True intentional systems are systematically flexible. We suggest that we should be particularly alert to the possibility of such systematically flexible true intentional systems developing in the areas of exploratory robots and artificial personal assistants. Finally, we argue that in light of our failure to respect the well-being of existing biological moral patients and worries about our limited resources, there are compelling moral reasons to treat artificial moral patiency as something to be avoided at least for now.