Dancing with Strange Partners: AI, Pseudo-Persons, and Communities

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Fall 2025 Andrew Garnar AI Lecture (1920 x 1080 px) - 2

Illustration of robot dancing with woman in a ballroom.

Lecture given by Dr. Andrew Garnar. Talk Abstract: As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more sophisticated, the ethics of AI becomes increasingly pressing. A common theme in the AI ethics literature is to find ways to program ethics into the AI. While important, it is also vital for human users to consider their relationship to AI. In order to demonstrate this, the paper uses American pragmatism and post-phenomenology to explore how to best incorporate artificial intelligences into moral communities. Given this framework, the paper argues that AIs should be interacted with as “pseudo-persons.” AIs are not full persons, but given how humans can coordinate actions with them, they should be engaged with in ways that go beyond being a mere thing. The reconstruction of AI as “pseudo-persons” has two important consequences. First, it entails that both humans and AIs bear responsibility in terms of the moral community, and both are targets for the reconstruction of the community. Second, it opens a space for the later inclusion of more sophisticated AIs.