Who is responsible when AI causes harm?
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Makenzie Michener
College:
College of Liberal Arts
Major:
Psychology
Faculty Research Advisor(s):
Peter Kardos
Abstract:
Who is responsible when an employee causes harm? How much do we blame the
employee, and how much blame do their supervisors also take? Past studies show how people distribute responsibility between supervisors and subordinates within organizations. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots occupy more and more positions in organizations, we don’t know how we attribute responsibility to the human supervisors of these machines after they cause harm. In the medical field, for example, AI is often applied as part of diagnostic procedures and these predictive procedures utilizing AI sometimes make erroneous judgments and thus cause harm. It is therefore important to explore responsibility attribution in organizations and reveal who is at fault for the mistakes made by AI. Is it the AI, the supervisor, or the creator of the machine? Relying on the psychological literature of collective responsibility and blame attribution, we are investigating how people distribute responsibility within organizations when
robots and AI versus human employees perform harmful actions.