Artificial intelligence, ethics, and intergenerational responsibility

Victor Klockmann, Alicia von Schenk and Marie Claire Villeval

No 335, SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE

Abstract: In more and more situations, artificially intelligent algorithms have to model humans' (social) preferences on whose behalf they increasingly make decisions. They can learn these preferences through the repeated observation of human behavior in social encounters. In such a context, do individuals adjust the selfishness or prosociality of their behavior when it is common knowledge that their actions produce various externalities through the training of an algorithm? In an online experiment, we let participants' choices in dictator games train an algorithm. Thereby, they create an externality on future decision making of an intelligent system that affects future participants. We show that individuals who are aware of the consequences of their training on the payoffs of a future generation behave more prosocially, but only when they bear the risk of being harmed themselves by future algorithmic choices. In that case, the externality of artificially intelligence training induces a significantly higher share of egalitarian decisions in the present.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Morality; Prosociality; Generations; Externalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C49 C91 D10 D62 D63 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Artificial intelligence, ethics, and intergenerational responsibility (2022)
Working Paper: Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Intergenerational Responsibility (2022)
Working Paper: Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Intergenerational Responsibility (2021)
Working Paper: Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Intergenerational Responsibility (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:safewp:335

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4002578

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