Moral status of artificial intelligence

Abstract

My main goal in this paper is to conduct a detailed analysis of the moral status of artificial intelligence. I will start by clarifying the notion of moral status, as well as the dichotomy between moral agent and moral patient, which plays a significant role in a vast number of perplexing dilemmas in applied ethics. This clarification is necessary to get a clearer view of the key issues that I intend to answer in the paper; more specifically, to the question (a) whether we can cause harm, in a morally relevant sense, to an intelligent artificial system, and (b) whether an intelligent artificial system can itself act in a way that can be assessed in moral terms.