AI Moral Patiency and Moral Dissonance: Almost Human, Almost Deserving Moral Treatment

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents become increasingly common in all walks of life, most users would agree that AI agents should behave ethically and morally towards their human users. This paper examines moral patiency (MP), the extent to which an entity is perceived as deserving moral consideration. This is a construct distinct from moral agency (the ability of an entity to act morally). We develop and validate a multi-dimensional scale capturing six positive and six negative factors indicating the extent to which someone ascribes MP to an AI agent. MP toward an AI agent was only weakly correlated with MP toward human agents. Interestingly, the MP factors that were related to trust in human agents were quite different than the MP factors that were related to trust in the AI agents. Some users reported treating the AI fairly, following its advice, and protecting its security. Fewer participants reported engaging in negative MP behaviors. These findings highlight the risk of moral dissonance, the ethical confusion users experience about wanting the AI to treat them morally, but failing to perceive a need to reciprocate and treat the AI morally. We argue that MP, and the moral dissonance it may generate, is a foundational yet underexplored lens for understanding the evolving dynamics of human-AI interaction.