Can Technological Artefacts Be Moral Agents?

In this paper we discuss the hypothesis that, ‘moral agency is distributed over both humans and technological artefacts’, recently proposed by Peter-Paul Verbeek. We present some arguments for thinking that Verbeek is mistaken. We argue that artefacts such as bridges, word processors, or bombs can never be (part of) moral agents. After having discussed some possible responses, as well as a moderate view proposed by Illies and Meijers, we conclude that technological artefacts are neutral tools that are at most bearers of instrumental value

Essays on freedom of choice and capabilities

A presente tese desenvolve três ensaios que abordam diferentes temas relacionados à liberdade de escolha. No primeiro ensaio, propomos uma regra para ranquear conjuntos de oportunidades conforme a liberdade de escolha que eles propiciam, e que leva consideração as meta-preferências dos indivíduos. Desenvolvendo um abordagem teorica, investigamos se, ao considerarmos indivíduos com múltiplos objetivos, algumas noções usuais acerca liberdade que foram propostas na literatura são modificadas. Os resultados mostram que a regra proposta viola o axioma da monotonicidade, e que indivíduos podem atribuir maior liberdade de escolha a conjuntos com menos opções. No segundo ensaio, propomos um experimento online baseado em analise conjunta para avaliar como a liberdade de escolha dos indivíduos é afetada pelas características dos menus que os agentes dispõem no momento de realizar escolhas. Estudamos o efeito de três bases informacionais propostas na literatura – a cardinalidade dos conjuntos, a diversidade das opções, e a qualidade dessas opções – e também investigamos se normas de comportamento social podem influenciar a liberdade de escolha dos agentes. Usando estimadores de diferenças em medias operacionalizados através de uma única regressão linear, os resultados sugerem que não apenas os elementos tradicionais como a cardinalidade, diversidade, e preferências, são fundamentais para entender liberdade de escolha, como também normas de comportamento social tem impacto significativo. Finalmente, no terceiro ensaio, investigamos como indivíduos realizam trade-offs entre diferentes dimensões de suas vidas quando consideram os seus potenciais para atingir melhores níveis de bem-estar. )Continua) Realizando um novo experimento baseado em análise conjunta, estudamos seis dimensões da vida dos indivíduos que são considerados centrais pela abordagem das capacitações, e avaliamos como diferentes circunstâncias em cada uma dessas dimensões afeta a liberdade de bem-estar dos indivíduos. Os resultados mostram que as dimensões relacionadas a segurança doméstica e a boas acomodações são de grande relevância, e, portanto, os formuladores de políticas publicas podem encontrar espaço para o estabelecimento de prioridades. Usando um modelo hierárquico Bayesiano, também investigamos se a importância que os participantes dão às dimensões estudadas varia conforme o nível de bem-estar que eles reportaram no estudo, e também se varia conforme a situação de vida em cada uma dessas seis dimensões. Os resultados sugerem que indivíduos que indicam menor bem-estar atribuem menor importância para a dimensão da vida relativa ao amor dos familiares próximos se comparado a outros participantes com maior nível de bem-estar subjetivo. Também, os participantes que indicaram ter sofrido alguma forma de violência doméstica no passado veem de forma menos negativa a ausência de uma boa condição de segurança doméstica, se comparado aos indivíduos que nunca sofreram com esse tipo de violência.This thesis presents three essays that approach different topics related to freedom of choice. In the first essay, we propose a rule to rank opportunity sets in terms of freedom of choice that considers information about individuals meta-preferences. From a theoretical perspective, we investigate whether accounting for a person’s multiple goals and objectives changes some common notions about freedom of choice that have been proposed by the literature. We show that our rule fails to respect the monotonicity axiom, and that individuals might experience greater freedom when some options are excluded from their initial opportunity sets. In the second essay, we propose an online conjoint experiment to evaluate how individuals’ freedom of choice is affected by the characteristics of the menus they have at their disposal at the moment of choice. We study the effect of traditional informational basis used to evaluate freedom of choice – sets’ cardinalities, the diversity, and the quality of their options – and also investigate whether social norms of behavior have some bearing on freedom. Using a difference-in-means estimator that is operationalized through a single linear regression, our results suggest that not only traditional elements such as cardinality, diversity, and preferences are key to understand freedom, but also that social norms of behavior have a significant impact. Finally, in our third essay, we investigate how trade-offs between capabilities take place when individuals consider their ability to achieve higher well-being. Using another conjoint experiment, we study six life domains that are considered as central by the capability approach, evaluating how varying the situation of individuals in each of these domains affect their well-being freedom. Our results show that being secure from domestic violence and enjoying a decent shelter have great relevance, and hence policymakers might find room for establishing priorities. Using a hierarchical Bayesian model, we also investigate whether the relative importance that people give to these life domains vary with participants’ subjective well-being, and with participants’ self-reported situations in each of the life domains studied. We find that subjects that reported lower well-being attached less importance to enjoying the love and care of their families as compared to those participants with higher subjective well-being. Moreover, respondents that reported to have suffered from some sort of domestic violence find less harmful the lack of a decent level of bodily security, as compared to those participants that have never suffered from such type of assault

Artificial superintelligence and its limits: why AlphaZero cannot become a general agent

An intelligent machine surpassing human intelligence across a wide set of skills has been proposed as a possible existential catastrophe (i.e., an event comparable in value to that of human extinction). Among those concerned about existential risk related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is common to assume that AI will not only be very intelligent, but also be a general agent (i.e., an agent capable of action in many different contexts). This article explores the characteristics of machine agency, and what it would mean for a machine to become a general agent. In particular, it does so by articulating some important differences between belief and desire in the context of machine agency. One such difference is that while an agent can by itself acquire new beliefs through learning, desires need to be derived from preexisting desires or acquired with the help of an external influence. Such influence could be a human programmer or natural selection. We argue that to become a general agent, a machine needs productive desires, or desires that can direct behavior across multiple contexts. However, productive desires cannot sui generis be derived from non-productive desires. Thus, even though general agency in AI could in principle be created, it cannot be produced by an AI spontaneously through an endogenous process. In conclusion, we argue that a common AI scenario, where general agency suddenly emerges in a non-general agent AI, is not plausible

Option Value, Substitutable Species, and Ecosystem Services

The concept of ecosystem services is a way of visualizing the instrumental value that nature has for human beings. Most ecosystem services can be performed by more than one species. This fact is sometimes used as an argument against the preservation of species. However, even though substitutability does detract from the instrumental value of a species, it also adds option value to it. The option value cannot make a substitutable species as instrumentally. valuable as a non-substitutable species, but in many cases, it can add enough value to make the species more valuable than the projects that threaten its existence

A Paradox for the Intrinsic Value of Freedom of Choice

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable

A Paradox for the Intrinsic Value of Freedom of Choice

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions should hold if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable: First, if rational people may differ as to which option is the most preferred in an option set, the offered freedom of choice has some intrinsic value. Second, if an option set is expanded with an option that must be less preferred than the already available options by any rational person, the intrinsic value of the offered freedom of choice does not increase. Third, if an option set is expanded, the intrinsic value of the offered freedom of choice does not decrease. Fourth, if an option set has only one option, it does not offer any intrinsically good freedom of choice. And, fifth, the relation ‘at least as good freedom of choice as’ is transitive. The trouble is that there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable

Measuring Freedom in Games

Behind the veil of ignorance, a policy maker ranks combinations of game forms and information about how players interact within the game forms. The paper presents axioms on the preferences of the policy maker that are necessary and sufficient for the policy maker's preferences to be represented by the sum of an expected valuation and a freedom measure. The freedom measure is the mutual information between players' strategies and the players' outcomes of the game, capturing the degree to which players control their outcomes. The measure extends several measures from the opportunity set based freedom literature to situations where agents interact. This allows freedom to be measured in general economic models and thus derive policy recommendations based on the freedom instead of the welfare of agents. To illustrate the measure and axioms, applications to civil liberties and optimal taxation are provided