Causes and Reasons – Decisions, Responsibility, and Trust in Techno-Social Interactions

Abstract

The interaction between humans and AI creates a new type of interaction that goes beyond subject object relations. AI technologies cannot always be described as a conventional object due to its activity capabilities and the black box aspect. An additional category is created, which is outlined by the ‘sobject approach’. This creates the opportunity to study the human-like characteristics of the interaction on the part of the AI. The ‘social’ possibilities of AI can thus be focused by referring to ‘techno-social’ rather than ‘social’ interactions, since the possibilities are different from the human sociality but exist in the human-social lifeworld. If an AI is a techno-social interaction partner, it can ‘act’ and make ‘decisions’. The additional category can therefore be used to investigate what types of decisions there are, if they are based on ‘reasons or causes’, whether they can be ‘trusted’, and if one can assign or delegate ‘responsibility’ to such technology. Thus, classical ethical questions regarding subjective categories like decision-making, trust, and trustworthiness, and responsibility can be rethought for somewhat human-like but not human technologies like AI.