On the Social-Relational Moral Standing of Al: An Empirical Study Using Al-Generated Art

Abstract

The moral standing of robots and artificial intelligence (Al) systems has become a widely debated topic by normative research. This discussion, however, has primarily focused on those systems developed for social functions, e.g., social robots. Given the increasing interdependence of society with nonsocial machines, examining how existing normative claims could be extended to specific disrupted sectors, such as the art industry, has become imperative. Inspired by the proposals to ground machines' moral status on social relations advanced by Gunkel and Coeckelbergh, this research presents online experiments (Sigma(N) = 448) that test whether and how interacting with Al-generated art affects the perceived moral standing of its creator, i.e., the Al-generative system. Our results indicate that assessing an Al system's lack of mind could influence how people subsequently evaluate Al-generated art. We also find that the overvaluation of Al-generated images could negatively affect their creator's perceived agency. Our experiments, however, did not suggest that interacting with Al-generated art has any significant effect on the perceived moral standing of the machine. These findings reveal that social-relational approaches to Al rights could be intertwined with property-based theses of moral standing. We shed light on how empirical studies can contribute to the Al and robot rights debate by revealing the public perception of this issue.