The Liability Problem for Autonomous Artificial Agents

This paper describes and frames a central ethical issue–the liability problem–facing the regulation of artificial computational agents, including artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic systems, as they become increasingly autonomous, and supersede current capabilities. While it frames the issue in legal terms of liability and culpability, these terms are deeply imbued and interconnected with their ethical and moral correlate– responsibility. In order for society to benefit from advances in AI technology, it will be necessary to develop regulatory policies which manage the risk and liability of deploying systems with increasingly autonomous capabilities. However, current approaches to liability have difficulties when it comes to dealing with autonomous artificial agents because their behavior may be unpredictable to those who create and deploy them, and they will not be proper legal or moral agents. This problem is the motivation for a research project that will explore the fundamental concepts of autonomy, agency and liability; clarify the different varieties of agency that artificial systems might realize, including causal, legal and moral; and the illuminate the relationships between these. The paper will frame the problem of liability in autonomous agents, sketch out its relation to fundamental concepts in human legal and moral agency– including autonomy, agency, causation, intention, responsibility and culpability–and their applicability or inapplicability to autonomous artificial agents.