Abstract The harm caused by artificial agents, such as autonomous machines, can coincide with the problem that it is difficult to attribute responsibility to any party. Certain harms may stem from the sociotechnical system that has arisen from the deployment of such artifacts. I argue that to fully address these types of harms and appoint responsibility, we can make use of political responsibility and structural injustice. In these terms, it is the ecosystem itself which is erected and perpetuated, for which someone needs to carry responsibility. This can be done by looking at power, influence, privilege gained from the structure erected and narrating that those agents who have the greatest accumulation of these factors are in fact responsible. As such, we propose that forward-looking responsibility, the responsibility for the avoidance or creating of a certain state-of-affairs, may be a welcome addition to describe who may be responsible in cases where clear causal links aren’t easily found.
Sietze Kai Kuilman (Mon,) studied this question.