New Technology and (Non-)Human Agency: Risks, Responsibilities and Regulation

This special workshop seeks to identify and address some normative – moral, ethical, political – issues raised by smart technology and its impact on agency. Possible topics include the following.

• Is or can a smart system be an agent and if yes, on what conditions? Is agency a prerequisite of responsibility?
• To whom can we attribute moral or legal agency and responsibility in a smart machine environment? Is it possible and/or desirable to identify and impose liability on human decision-makers on account of being the designer, owner or user of smart technology?
• What is the likely impact of smart machines on our experience of agency? How much moral weight should these experiences carry in individual and collective decisions about non-human agents?

We invite contributions discussing these and related questions from philosophical, social science and legal perspectives.