In AI We Trust: Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, and Reliability

By Mark Ryan. 2020

473 citations recorded by the source corpus.

One of the main difficulties in assessing artificial intelligence (AI) is the tendency for people to anthropomorphise it. This becomes particularly problematic when we attach human moral activities to AI. For example, the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on AI (HLEG) have adopted the position that we should establish a relationship of trust with AI and should cultivate trustworthy AI (HLEG AI Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI, 2019, p. 35). Trust is one of the most important and defining activities in human relationships, so proposing that AI should be trusted, is a very serious claim. This paper will show that AI cannot be something that has the capacity to be trusted according to the most prevalent definitions of trust because it does not possess emotive states or can be held responsible for their actions—requirements of the affective and normative accounts of trust. While AI meets all of the requirements of the rational account of trust, it will be shown that this is not actually a type of trust at all, but is instead, a form of reliance. Ultimately, even complex machines such as AI should not be viewed as trustworthy as this undermines the value of interpersonal trust, anthropomorphises AI, and diverts responsibility from those developing and using them.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Health Informatics, Safety Research

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Paul Rodway
2. Astrid Schepman
3. Christoph Kelp
4. Mona Simion

In Health Informatics

1. Paul Rodway
2. Christoph Kelp
3. Astrid Schepman
4. Mona Simion

In Safety Research

1. Paul Rodway
2. Astrid Schepman
3. Christoph Kelp
4. Mona Simion

Citations in the corpus

• Trustworthy artificial intelligence (2023, background): “3 Ryan (2020) makes a case against the application of In contrast to the view defended here, however, Ryan thinks that there is no account of trust (and trustworthiness), properly so-called, that we can apply to AI, and that we should speak merely in terms of reliance in relation to AI.”
• The General Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence Scale (GAAIS): Confirmatory Validation and Associations with Personality, Corporate Distrust, and General Trust (2022, methodology): “According to Ryan (2020) the use of the term “ trust ” in this context is a mis-nomer because trust is inherently tied to interpersonal relations between animate beings who experience emotions (see also DeCamp & Tilburt, 2019).”
• Trust in AI: progress, challenges, and future directions (2024, unknown): “(M. Ryan, 2020b) argues that instead of trust, the concept of reliance should be used when referring to AI, as AI lacks emotional states and responsibility for its actions.”