The ethics of autonomous technologies: Does AI face a reponsibility gap?

There are several reasons to be ethically concerned about the development and use of AI. In this contribution, we focus on one specific theme of concern: moral responsibility. In particular, we consider whether the use of autonomous AI causes a responsibility gap and put forward the thesis is that this is not the case. Our argument proceeds as follows. First, we provide some conceptual background by discussing respectively what autonomous systems are, how the notion of responsibility can be understood, and what the responsibility gap is about. Second, we explore to which extent it could make sense to assign responsibility to artificial systems. Third, we argue that the use of autonomous systems does not necessarily lead to a responsibility gap. In the fourth and last section of this chapter, we set out why the responsibility gap – even if it were to exist – is not necessarily problematic.