Abstract
The concept of agency as applied to technological artifacts has become an object of heated debate in the context of AI research because some AI researchers ascribe to programs the type of agency traditionally associated with humans. Confusion about agency is at the root of misconceptions about the possibilities for future AI. We introduce the concept of a triadic agency that includes the causal agency of artifacts and the intentional agency of humans to better describe what happens in AI as it functions in real-world contexts. We use the VW emission fraud case to explain triadic agency since in this case a technological artifact, namely software, was an essential part of the wrongdoing and the software might be said to have agency in the wrongdoing. We then extend the case to include futuristic AI, imagining AI that becomes more and more autonomous.
Highlights
A good deal of attention is being given to artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to be used in so many domains of human life
For example, between a person telling another person it is time to go and an alarm clock going off to alert a person that it is time to go. The former kind of agency is traditionally seen as exclusively human, while the latter is attributed to artifacts as well as humans. This distinction is fundamental when it comes to responsibility because human agents can be considered responsible for their actions, both ethically and legally, while artifacts cannot
The concept of agency as applied to technological artifacts has become an object of heated debate in the context of AI research because some AI researchers ascribe to programs the type of agency traditionally associated with humans (Allen and Wallach 2012; Bostrom 2014; Malle and Scheutz 2015; Omohundro 2016; Yampolskiy 2016)
Summary
A good deal of attention is being given to artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to be used in so many domains of human life. AI & SOCIETY (2019) 34:639–647 abstract or ontological sense; we are concerned with the notion of agency as it comes into play in issues of responsibility (ethical and legal) To do this we begin with the Volkswagen (VW) emission fraud case (Hotten 2015), which we analyze with an eye to understanding the agency of a computational artifact. The concept of agency as applied to technological artifacts has become an object of heated debate in the context of AI research because some AI researchers ascribe to programs the type of agency traditionally associated with humans (Allen and Wallach 2012; Bostrom 2014; Malle and Scheutz 2015; Omohundro 2016; Yampolskiy 2016) These researchers rarely affirm an identity between the agency of programs and the agency of humans, they do not draw any distinction either, except to point out the greater efficiency and efficacy of the former, thanks to its being technological. We think that a better understanding of agency can provide a clearer view of responsibility when humans act with technology, be it artifacts of today or futuristic AI
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