What is the relation between responsibility for an act and the tool that was used to perform the act? There's a sort of moral dance people sometimes perform in order to separate the responsibility from themselves by blaming the tool. But can a tool be responsible? In the case of a hammer or a gun, the answer seems obvious, but what about a robot? This paper (22 page PDF) argues that "our intuitions about what entities should be afforded moral status tend to go hand in hand with our intuitions about whether an entity has a mind." No mind, nor moral status, hence, no responsibility. But then, I ask, where does the responsibility lie? It depends. It might lie in the person who used the tool. But it also lies in the hands of the person who made the tool, the person who made the tool available to the user, and the person who allowed the use of the tool by the user. Image (and see also): Assessing the Moral Status of Robots: A Shorter Defence of Ethical Behaviourism. Related: Matt Crosslin, turns out that AI is killing people.
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