Inbetweenism: Why Our Concepts Reach Their Limits When It Comes to Generative AI

Recent technological leaps in Artificial Intelligence have led to new types of human-machine interactions that challenge the application of our existing ethical approaches: It is not clear what status should be assigned to the new artificial systems.

With a dichotomous framework distinguishing mere tools from social agents, one has only two options – either all artificial systems are mere tools and don´t have an ethical status, or some may be treated like living agents with an ethical status. Often, assumptions concerning their abilities are made too quickly in either extreme direction, such as (over-)attributions or plain denials. This invites the idea of a gradual approach that locates them on a spectrum in between the dichotomous distinctions.

To update our ethical positions, this book argues that AI technology gives rise to phenomena that fall through our dichotomous conceptual net and proposes a new framework – inbetweenism – which offers a wide variety of categories for discussing neglected in-between phenomena.

This is highly relevant because it is likely that societal changes will alter our understanding of the status of artificial systems in our social realm, as they might soon enter this realm as a new type of social agent.

Anna Strasser, DenkWerkstatt Berlin / Cognition, Values, Behaviour – Interdisciplinary Research Lab from Munich (LMU), Germany.