Robots, Chatbots, Self-Driving Cars: Perceptions of Mind and Morality Across Artificial Intelligences

2025-02-25

AI Summary

This study investigates how the public differentially attributes mind (agency/experience) and moral status (moral agency/moral patiency) to 26 AI and non-AI entities—including robots, chatbots, and autonomous vehicles—and how these attributions shape trust and responsibility assignment. Through a pre-registered large-scale online experiment (N = 975), employing standardized psychometric scales and advanced statistical modeling, it delivers the first systematic, cross-modal quantitative comparison of AI entities along the dual dimensions of mind perception and moral standing. Results reveal that moral agency is consistently rated significantly higher than experience, and both dimensions are strongly modulated by physical and interactive morphology: ChatGPT is perceived as having experience levels comparable to inanimate objects (e.g., rock), whereas Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system receives moral responsibility ratings approaching those assigned to chimpanzees. These findings establish physical/interactive embodiment as a critical design variable governing moral attribution, providing empirical grounding for AI ethics frameworks and human–AI trust mechanisms.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness
• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

AI systems have rapidly advanced, diversified, and proliferated, but our knowledge of people's perceptions of mind and morality in them is limited, despite its importance for outcomes such as whether people trust AIs and how they assign responsibility for AI-caused harms. In a preregistered online study, 975 participants rated 26 AI and non-AI entities. Overall, AIs were perceived to have low-to-moderate agency (e.g., planning, acting), between inanimate objects and ants, and low experience (e.g., sensing, feeling). For example, ChatGPT was rated only as capable of feeling pleasure and pain as a rock. The analogous moral faculties, moral agency (doing right or wrong) and moral patiency (being treated rightly or wrongly) were higher and more varied, particularly moral agency: The highest-rated AI, a Tesla Full Self-Driving car, was rated as morally responsible for harm as a chimpanzee. We discuss how design choices can help manage perceptions, particularly in high-stakes moral contexts.

Problem

• Assessing perceptions of AI minds
• Evaluating moral agency in AI
• Exploring design influence on AI morality

Innovation

• Online study with 975 participants
• Rated 26 AI and non-AI entities
• Explored perceptions of AI agency and morality