Accountability

Patrick Hew argued that for an artificial system to be morally responsible, its rules for
behaviour and the mechanisms for supplying those rules must not be supplied entirely
by external humans. He further argued that such systems are a substantial departure
from technologies and theory as extant in 2014. An artificial system based on those
technologies will carry zero responsibility for its behaviour. Moral responsibility is
apportioned to the humans that created and programmed the system.
(A more extensive review of arguments may be found in.)
Arguments That Artificial Systems Can
Be Morally Responsible
Colin Allen et al. proposed that an artificial
system may be morally responsible if its
behaviours are functionally indistinguishable
from a moral person, coining the idea of a 'Moral
Turing Test'. They subsequently disavowed the
Moral Turing Test in recognition of controversies
surrounding the Turing Test.
Andreas Matthias described a 'responsibility gap' where to hold humans responsible for
a machine would be an injustice, but to hold the machine responsible would challenge
'traditional' ways of ascription. He proposed three cases where the machine's behaviour
ought to be attributed to the machine and not its designers or operators. First, he
argued that modern machines are inherently unpredictable (to some degree), but
perform tasks that need to be performed yet cannot be handled by simpler means.
Second, that there are increasing 'layers of obscurity' between manufacturers and
system, as hand coded programs are replaced with more sophisticated means. Third, in
systems that have rules of operation that can be changed during the operation of the
machine.
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