Contribution: raising a virtue-ethics-based concern regarding deployment of social robots relying on deep learning AI and developing a novel argumentation to show that robotic AI systems cannot genuinely be virtuous but can only behave in a virtuous way; highlighting implications for current research in machine ethics, technology ethics, and Human–Robot Interaction.
Contribution: arguing that Artificial Moral Advisors (AMAs) cannot qualify as morally responsible agents based on their incapacity to meet a set of four conditions moral responsibility, previously developed by the PI in the virtue ethics traditions; arguing that AMAs could instead morally enhance users if they are interpreted as enablers for moral knowledge of the contextual variables surrounding human moral decision-making, with the unexpected implication that such a use might enlarge human moral responsibility.
Contribution: connecting the ethical dimension of responsibility in “Responsible AI” with Aristotelian virtue ethics, where notions of context and dianoetic virtues play a grounding role for the concept of moral responsibility; exploring the practical implications along the triadic dimensions of ethics by design, ethics in design and ethics for designers.
Contribution: developing a two-level account of moral responsibility in organizations that connects individual and organizational moral responsibility through the concepts of virtue and virtuousness; this is further operationalized into practical guidelines to ascribe degrees of individual and organizational blame, which can be used as a tool by policymakers and industry.