At the IAB World Congress of Bioethics 2020, Dr Sarah Morley, Dr David Lawrence, Dr Daniel Tigard and Dr Sarah Chan explored doctrinal and normative analysis of concepts from their fields, exploring foundational work from the Novel Beings project.

The theme of the 2020 World Congress of Bioethics was Autonomy and Solidarity: Bridging the Tensions. This panel was structured to provide a building narrative and to allow substantial time for audience input in the form of open discussion. Panellists invited focussed feedback on their proposed regulatory cornerstones. 

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Emerging biotechnologies and potential advances in artificial intelligence are likely to create new forms of life with varying levels of true autonomy and cognitive capacity, potentially being recognisable sentience or even sapience.

These cutting-edge developments will have considerable effects on society and create challenges for regulation. Very little literature currently exists addressing these issues, and the Novel Beings project provides a unique multi-disciplinary approach to ensuring accountability for the consequences of developing this technology, including ethical and practical impacts on society.

To build foundations for appropriate legal redress the papers focussed on determining when a corporation or 'novel being' may be held morally and legally responsible for the decisions the technologies make, including the ways in which any novel mind might employ autonomous cognitive processes. We aimed to establish regulatory criteria which can assess decision-making capacity, or if legal responsibility falls to its developer or 'owner.’ Ultimately this will lead to a full set of policy recommendations addressing the current lack of formal frameworks around corporations' development and deployment of morally significant technologies.

Running order of talks:

Dr Sarah Morley - Regulating replicants: Moral responsibility and decision making in novel beings

Dr David Lawrence - Regulating the Tyrell Corporation: The emergence of novel beings

Dr Daniel Tigard - Artificial moral responsibility: How we can and cannot hold machines responsible

Dr Sarah Chan - “Human factors” and “gut instincts”? Moral responsibility and AI in health care

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