On not being a robot

AI as a threat to rational agency

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21335748
AutoresRobert Sparrow (0000-0001-6093-9456, Monash University, autor de correspondencia), Gene Flenady (0000-0002-3113-3354, Monash University)
Año2026
Páginas1-20
Fecha de publicación2026-05-19
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2026.2673086
OpenAlexW7161678685
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas37

As Robert Brandom has argued, in order to possess and exercise rational agency – to make judgments and to assess the judgments of others – one must be recognised as a rational agent by other rational agents who, in turn, one recognises as competent to assess one’s rational agency. Moreover, the process of assessing the judgments of other agents is one in which participants must accept moral responsibility for – must ‘stand behind’ – their claims. Unfortunately, machines are not yet – and are unlikely ever to be – moral agents. Consequently, they are unable to recognise us and/or evaluate our claims. The more other people interact with machines, the less they can serve to establish our own status as rational agents. Human interactions with AI systems therefore constitute a profound and, as yet, mostly unrecognised threat to human agency. If we do not want our relationship to machines to reduce us to robots, we will need to rethink both the future of human–computer interaction and our account of what it means to be human

Action (physics) · Agency (philosophy) · Argument (complex analysis) · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations