The Moral Status of Artificial Intelligence: in Search of a Sociological Perspective

The article examines AI from the perspective of moral agency and moral patiency. In the forepart, an overview of the main theoretical arguments as well as some experimental data regarding the (im)possibility of grounding the moral status of intelligent machines is provided. Evidence shows that perceived anthropomorphism and animism, this being culturally dependent, significantly influence the moral recognition of AI. The second part of the article highlights some research perspectives that seem promising for sociology of morality to be applied to the AI field: (a) discrimination of moral situations specific to interaction with AI, (b) discovering the cultural background of moral agency and patiency of AI, (c) expertise in AI code of ethics development, (d) inquiry into AI value alignment when delegating morally relevant decisions. The remainder of the article interprets moral status of AI as a stratification of integrated moral responsibility for social consequences in human-machine interactions and represents a pyramid within which several layers are distinguished, demonstrating the tendency to link the moral ‘non-recognition’ of AI with enhancing its autonomy and ‘consciousness’.