Partiality, Relationships, and AI

Interactions with AI systems increasingly replace our interactions with humans. We use electronic self-checkout services instead of relying on cashiers, ask personal assistants, agents, or chatbots for advice where we might have previously asked a friend or parent; and we even use chatbots to replace interhuman social interaction and feelings of connectedness.

These varied interactions with AI systems raise a number of important philosophical questions: can relationships with AIs truly replace the interhuman relationships they were modelled on? Which aspects of connections with humans might be lost when replacing humans with AIs? Are relationship goods such as intimacy, trust, and love attainable in human-AI relationships?

Moreover, we standardly accept that we are allowed, and sometimes even required, to treat our friends, colleagues and family members with special moral consideration. May, or perhaps should, we treat AIs that take on the roles of friends, colleagues and other intimates in a similarly partial way? And, on the flipside, how should AIs treat us if they take on these roles? Are they permitted, or required, to treat us partially in the way that friends and colleagues usually do?

This workshop addresses these questions. By bringing together researchers from the fields of the ethics of partiality, human-robot relationships, and the ethics of AI more generally, the workshop explores the ethical significance and limitations of the relationships we are increasingly developing with AIs.

The workshop is kindly sponsored by the Munich Center for Machine Learning and jointly organised by LMU's research group in the ethics of AI (Prof. Dr. Sven Nyholm, Dr. Benjamin Lange and Lara Maszynski) and The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics (Prof. Dr. Tom Douglas).