TY - JOUR A1 - Feier, Till A1 - Gogoll, Jan A1 - Uhl, Matthias T1 - Hiding Behind Machines: Artificial Agents May Help to Evade Punishment JF - Science and Engineering Ethics N2 - The transfer of tasks with sometimes far-reaching implications to autonomous systems raises a number of ethical questions. In addition to fundamental questions about the moral agency of these systems, behavioral issues arise. We investigate the empirically accessible question of whether the imposition of harm by an agent is systematically judged differently when the agent is artificial and not human. The results of a laboratory experiment suggest that decision-makers can actually avoid punishment more easily by delegating to machines than by delegating to other people. Our results imply that the availability of artificial agents could provide stronger incentives for decision-makers to delegate sensitive decisions. UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00372-7 KW - automation KW - ethics KW - experiment KW - responsibility KW - algorithm Y1 - 2022 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00372-7 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-23155 SN - 1471-5546 SN - 1353-3452 VL - 28 IS - 2 PB - Springer Nature CY - Cham ER -