Moral agency status is often given to those individuals or entities which act intentionally within a society or environment. In the past, moral agency has primarily been focused on human beings and some higher-order animals. However, with the fast-paced advancements made in artificial intelligence, we are now quickly approaching the point where we need to ask an important question: should we grant moral agency status to AI? To answer this question, we need to determine the moral agency status of these (...) entities in society. In this paper I argue that to grant moral agency status to an entity, deliberate norm-adherence must be possible. In this paper I argue that, under the current status quo, AI systems are unable to meet this criterion. The novel contribution this paper makes to the field of machine ethics is first, to provide at least two criteria with which we can determine moral agency status. We do this by determining the possibility of deliberate norm-adherence through examining the possibility of deliberate norm-violation. Second, to show that establishing moral agency in AI suffer the same pitfalls as establishing moral agency in constitutive accounts of agency. (shrink)

Determining the agency-status of machines and AI has never been more pressing. As we progress into a future where humans and machines more closely co-exist, understanding hallmark features of agency affords us the ability to develop policy and narratives which cater to both humans and machines. This paper maintains that decision-making processes largely underpin agential action, and that in most instances, these processes yield good results in terms of making good choices. However, in some instances, when faced with two (or (...) more) choices, an agent may find themselves with equal reasons to choose either - thus being presented with a tie. This paper argues that in the event of a tie, the ability to create a voluntarist reason is a hallmark feature of agency, and second, that AI, through current tie-breaking mechanisms does not have this ability, and thus fails at this particular feature of agency. (shrink)

Technological unemployment is a very real phenomenon that should be addressed by governments and businesses alike. This paper argues that current approaches to technological unemployment are short-sighted in that they focus predominantly and primarily on current generations. This kind of approach results in harm such as ignoring impending meaning-crises and propagating a potential form of human-quota-driven tokenism in the process of implementing automation in the workplace. Arguably, current generations can (and should) benefit from communal resources insofar as they do not (...) harm the least privileged of future generations. That is the threshold that is set in this paper and this threshold can serve as a guiding principle for leaders when making decisions about whether automation should be implemented, the degree and scope to which automation should be implemented, and the policies regarding the process of the implementation and the regulation of automation in the workplace. An intergenerational justice approach is a novel approach to the problem of technological unemployment and can inform decision-making and policy-setting alike. (shrink)