Philosophy

The Philosophy Department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are proud to present the third talk of our Philosophy and AI speaker series, by Professor Robert Sparrow (Monash University). Please see below for information about the talk. A reception will follow in Griffin-Floyd 303.

Title: The testimony gap: Machines and reasons

Abstract: Most people who have considered the matter have concluded machines cannot be full moral agents. Responsibility for the consequences of acting on the outputs of machines must always rest with a human being. A key problem for the ethical use of AI, then, is to ensure that the use of AI doesn’t block the attribution of responsibility to human beings or lead to individuals being unfairly held responsible for things over which they had no control. This is the notorious “responsibility gap”. In this paper we argue that the claim that machines cannot be held responsible for their actions has unacknowledged implications for the extent to which the outputs of AI can serve as reasons for belief. Following Robert Brandom, we argue that, because the assertion of a claim is an action, moral agency is a necessary condition for the giving and evaluating of reasons in discourse. Thus, the same considerations that suggest that machines cannot be held responsible for their actions in general suggest that they cannot be held to account for the epistemic value — or lack of value — of their claims. If there is a responsibility gap, then there is also a “testimony gap”. An under-recognized problem with the use of AI, then, is to ensure that it doesn’t block the attribution of testimony to human beings or lead to individuals being held responsible for claims that they have not asserted. More generally, this argument suggests that the outputs of even “intelligent” machines are not capable of serving as justifications for belief or action without one or more people accepting responsibility for them.