Book contents
- Empathy and Artificial Intelligence
- Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
- Empathy and Artificial Intelligence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- AI and Empathy at a Crossroads
- Part IUnderstanding Empathy
- Part IIPerceiving AI Empathy
- Part IIIBeyond Text: Embodiment and Robots
- Part IVMoral Implications
- Chapter 20Contemporary AI and the Value of Empathy
- Chapter 21Can Empathy Guide Ethical AI?
- Chapter 22Does AI Need Empathy in Medicine?
- Chapter 23AI in Healthcare
- Chapter 24AI, Empathy, and Moral Status
- Chapter 25AI Should Develop Human Empathy, Not Replace It
- Chapter 26Practical Capacities, Empathy, and Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
- Chapter 27Stories of Empathy
- Index
- Studies In Emotion and Social Interaction
- References
Chapter 24 - AI, Empathy, and Moral Status
from Part IV - Moral Implications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2026
Book contents
- Empathy and Artificial Intelligence
- Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
- Empathy and Artificial Intelligence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- AI and Empathy at a Crossroads
- Part IUnderstanding Empathy
- Part IIPerceiving AI Empathy
- Part IIIBeyond Text: Embodiment and Robots
- Part IVMoral Implications
- Chapter 20Contemporary AI and the Value of Empathy
- Chapter 21Can Empathy Guide Ethical AI?
- Chapter 22Does AI Need Empathy in Medicine?
- Chapter 23AI in Healthcare
- Chapter 24AI, Empathy, and Moral Status
- Chapter 25AI Should Develop Human Empathy, Not Replace It
- Chapter 26Practical Capacities, Empathy, and Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
- Chapter 27Stories of Empathy
- Index
- Studies In Emotion and Social Interaction
- References
Summary
As conversational AI systems increasingly generate perceptions of affective capacities, particularly the sense of "feeling heard," questions about AI moral status demand serious attention. We survey prominent approaches to grounding AI moral status, including ethical behaviorism, consciousness-based accounts, and agency-based frameworks. While each offers important insights, they face significant challenges: ethical behaviorism may be too permissive, while debates about consciousness and agency remain theoretically intractable. We argue for an alternative approach that asks direct normative questions about which rights, rules, reasons, and wrongs should protect AI systems, indexed to their specific capacities and vulnerabilities. This framework permits fine-grained, proportional moral consideration without requiring resolution of contested questions about machine consciousness or sentience and thus offers a pragmatic middle ground as AIs become increasingly integrated into social life.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Empathy and Artificial IntelligenceChallenges, Advances and Ethical Considerations, pp. 233 - 240Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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