Blameless responsibility for faultless AI harm

Abstract

This article advances a novel approach to the question of who should take responsibility when no one is to blame, and shows how it can be applied to the emerging problem of faultless harm caused by artificial intelligence (AI). As AI systems increase in complexity and scale, so too does the risk of harm that cannot be neatly traced back to human intent or negligence. This trajectory challenges conventional, blame-based responsibility practices, calling instead for an account that does not presuppose wrongdoing. I argue here that AI deployers bear a strict moral duty to take responsibility for harmful outcomes, even when the deployment is, all things considered, morally justified. This duty arises from what I call the ‘accidental relationship’, a distinctive moral relationship that emerges whenever an agent, here the AI deployer, non-negligently and non-intentionally inflicts harm on another party. Through this distinct agential involvement in the harm, the deployer incurs special duties to acknowledge and redress the victim’s loss. The present account does not conceptualize the duty to take responsibility as a matter of repairing a prior wrongdoing, but as a matter of affirming the victim’s equal moral standing within the accidental relationship.