Sharing Moral Responsibility with Robots: A Pragmatic Approach

Abstract. The increased use of autonomous, learning intelligent systems is causing a new division of tasks between humans and technological artifacts, forcing us to examine the related distribution of responsibilities for their design, production, implementation and use. The focus of our analysis is on the moral responsibility in learning intelligent systems and producer-user relationship mediated by intelligent adaptive and autonomous technology. An argument is made that intelligent artifact can be ascribed “responsibility ” in the same pragmatic (functionalist, instrumental) way as they are ascribed “intelligence”. We claim that having a system which “takes care ” of certain tasks intelligently, learning from experience and making autonomous decisions gives us reasons to talk about a system (an artifact) as being “responsible for a task”. No doubt, technology is morally significant for humans, so the “responsibility for a task” with moral consequences could be seen as moral responsibility. However, technological artifacts at the present stage of development can hardly be ascribed any significant degree of moral autonomy. Technological artifacts are products o