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Machines are not moral role models

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, page 609 (2022)Cite this article

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To the Editor — A recent review published in Nature Human Behaviour described machines as being able to serve as ‘bad role models’ to humans1. This position of influence ostensibly gives machines the ‘power to corrupt the good morals’ of humans. In this Correspondence, I adopt a ‘human-centred’ perspective on the use of machine — which is supported by Köbis and colleagues in box 1 of their review1 — that implies that even if machines appear to act in ways that seem similar to how moral agents act, they do not have any moral agency and therefore do not carry moral responsibility.

A key challenge in articulating the message that unethical outcomes produced by a machine’s decisions could influence the moral behaviour of humans is that, in the authors’ writing, essential features of human morality and agency are often implicitly projected onto machines: thereby making machines social beings2. As a result, in my view the claims made in the Köbis et al. review1 are guided by an anthropomorphic narrative, which evokes the impression that machines themselves can be bad and thus possess a moral agency that allows them to act as unethical role models. Such an assumption is, however, an incorrect one.

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References

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  1. National University of Singapore, Centre on AI Technology for Humankind, NUS Business School, Singapore, Singapore

    David De Cremer

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  1. David De Cremer
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Correspondence to David De Cremer.

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De Cremer, D. Machines are not moral role models. Nat Hum Behav 6, 609 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01290-1

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