Ethics Around the Table: Veljko Dubljević

Artificial morality: Could AI replicate the complexity of human moral decision-making?

Abstract:

The Agent-Deed-Consequence (ADC) model provides a promising descriptive and normative account of moral decision making, while also lending itself well to implementation in AI. The ADC model explains moral judgments by breaking them down into positive or negative intuitive evaluations of the Agent, Deed, and Consequence in any given situation. These intuitive evaluations combine to produce a positive or negative judgment of moral acceptability. For example, the overall judgment of moral acceptability in a situation in which someone committed a deed that is judged as negative (e.g., breaking a law) would be mitigated if the agent had good intentions and the action had a good consequence. This explains the considerable flexibility and stability of human moral judgment that has yet to be replicated in AI. This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the ADC model and how the model could inform future work on ethics of AI in general.