A world without violet
Peculiar consequences of granting moral status to Artificial Intelligences
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17675920 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sever Ioan Topan (McGill University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 5103-5117 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | AI & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-5666 • E-ISSN: 1435-5655 |
| Publisher | Springer Nature (PUBLISHER • SG) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s00146-025-02834-5 |
| OpenAlex | W7124746472 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 56 |
Granting artificial intelligences (AIs) moral status creates a set of ethical dilemmas stemming from our ability to control their preferences. As an illustrative example, if we could program an artificial system worthy of moral agency to experience suffering when encountering the color violet, then we appear to have created a scenario where we have a moral imperative to remove any violet objects from our surroundings. AIs in this situation can effectively “hijack” our moral landscape, altering the moral valence of arbitrary world states. In this work, we formalize the phenomenon of moral hijacking, analyze its implications from the perspective of several ethical systems, and propose recommendations for constraining novel preference creation in moral agents
Agency (philosophy) · Moral agency · Moral dilemma · Moral disengagement · Moral reasoning · Perspective (graphical) · Phenomenon · Social cognitive theory of morality · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
The Machine Question
Robot Rights
Speciesism and Moral Status
Procreative Beneficence
Dimensions of Mind Perception
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Minds, brains, and programs
Deep learning
A Theory of Justice
Moral Saints
Dual-use implications of AI text generation
The Moral Consideration of Artificial Entities
The hard problem of AI rights
On the moral status of social robots
What do we owe to intelligent robots
The Moral Standing of Machines
Moral Mechanisms
Introduction to the Special Issue on Machine Morality
What We Owe to Each Other
The Right and the Good
Reasons and Persons
Why robots should not be treated like animals
| Highly cited | No |
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