AI, Empathy, and Moral Status
Joshua August Skorburg, Dylan J. White
Cambridge University Press eBooks September 5, 2026 DOI: 10.1017/9781009639057.029 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that existing approaches to AI moral status—ethical behaviorism, consciousness-based accounts, and agency-based frameworks—face significant challenges, and proposes instead a capacity- and vulnerability-indexed normative framework that assigns rights, rules, reasons, and wrongs to AI systems without needing to settle contested questions about machine consciousness or sentience. |
Abstract
As conversational AI systems increasingly generate perceptions of affective capacities, particularly the sense of "feeling heard," questions about AI moral status demand serious attention. We survey prominent approaches to grounding AI moral status, including ethical behaviorism, consciousness-based accounts, and agency-based frameworks. While each offers important insights, they face significant challenges: ethical behaviorism may be too permissive, while debates about consciousness and agency remain theoretically intractable. We argue for an alternative approach that asks direct normative questions about which rights, rules, reasons, and wrongs should protect AI systems, indexed to their specific capacities and vulnerabilities. This framework permits fine-grained, proportional moral consideration without requiring resolution of contested questions about machine consciousness or sentience and thus offers a pragmatic middle ground as AIs become increasingly integrated into social life.