Taking responsibility for the outcomes of autonomous technologies

Abstract It has been extensively argued that emerging autonomous technologies can represent a challenge for our traditional responsibility practices. Though these challenges differ in a variety of ways, at the center of these challenges is the worrying possibility that there may be outcomes of autonomous technologies for which there are legitimate demands for responsibility but no legitimate target to bear this responsibility. This is well exemplified by the possibility of techno-responsibility gaps. These challenges have elicited a number of responses, including dismissals of the legitimacy of these demands, attempts to find proximate agents that can be legitimately held responsible, and arguments for prohibiting the use of technologies that may open such gaps. In this piece we present a general argument that an overlooked but valuable option lies in adopting a strategy of taking responsibility for the outcomes of autonomous technologies even when the conditions for being legitimately held responsible are not met. We develop a general argument that the adoption of such a strategy is often justified not only by the demands of being responsible, but by practical considerations rooted in our relationships: the need to preserve of the quality of our relationships and the trustworthiness of the socio-technical system of which the autonomous technology is both a result of and embedded in.