Risk Imposition by Artificial Agents: The Moral Proxy Problem

Abstract

It seems undeniable that the coming years will see an ever-increasing reliance on artificial agents that are, on the one hand, autonomous in the sense that they process information and make decisions without continuous human input, and, on the other hand, fall short of the kind of agency that would warrant ascribing moral responsibility to the artificial agent itself. What I have in mind here are artificial agents such as self-driving cars, artificial trading agents in financial markets, nursebots or robot teachers. As these examples illustrate, many such agents make 1