Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction (pre-print) by Madeleine Clare Elish :: SSRN (opens in new tab)  🔀BGP

I introduce the concept of a moral crumple zone to describe how responsibility for an action may be misattributed to a human actor who had limited control over the behavior of an automated or autonomous system. Just as the crumple zone in a car is designed to absorb the force of impact in a crash, the human in a highly complex and automated system may become simply a component—accidentally or intentionally—that bears the brunt of the moral and legal responsibilities when the overall system ma...