Artificial Moral Patients: Mentality, Intentionality, and Systematicity

Authors

  • Howard Nye University of Alberta
  • Tugba Yoldas University of Alberta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/irie418

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Moral Patients, Mental Patients, Moral Patients, Well-being

Abstract

In this paper, we defend three claims about what it will take for an AI system to be a basic moral patient to whom we can owe duties of non-maleficence not to harm her and duties of beneficence to benefit her: (1) Moral patients are mental patients; (2) Mental patients are true intentional systems; and (3) True intentional systems are systematically flexible. We suggest that we should be particularly alert to the possibility of such systematically flexible true intentional systems developing in the areas of exploratory robots and artificial personal assistants. Finally, we argue that in light of our failure to respect the well-being of existing biological moral patients and worries about our limited resources, there are compelling moral reasons to treat artificial moral patiency as something to be avoided at least for now.

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Published

2021-03-30

How to Cite

Nye, Howard, and Tugba Yoldas. 2021. “Artificial Moral Patients: Mentality, Intentionality, and Systematicity”. The International Review of Information Ethics 29 (March). Edmonton, Canada. https://doi.org/10.29173/irie418.