"Altering the responsible agent" [2019] ELECD 1031; in Chinen, Mark (ed), "Law and Autonomous Machines" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 127

Book Title: Law and Autonomous Machines

Editor(s): Chinen, Mark

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Altering the responsible agent

Number of pages: 19

Abstract/Description:

Another way to alter responsibility is to extend agency beyond the human individual. A growing awareness of how permeable the concept of responsibility is, in part because technology itself has the potential to affect the way we understand ourselves and our own agency, could make legal doctrines based on associational responsibility more acceptable or make us more open to viewing ourselves as working in tandem with artificial agents. However, even if those modifications result in the expansion of ethical and legal subjects capable of bearing responsibility, for the foreseeable future, it will be human beings that will bear the brunt of that responsibility, not the autonomous machines and systems with which they are associated. The issues discussed regarding group responsibility again make themselves felt. The end result is a meaningful possibility that there will be gaps in responsibility.