• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.169-203
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• 2022

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology advances, the number of cases in which AI becomes an object or subject of moral judgment is increasing, and this trend is expected to accelerate. Although the area of AI in human society expands, relatively few studies have been conducted on how people perceive and respond to AI. Three studies examined the effect of the anthropomorphism of AI on its responsibility. We predicted that anthropomorphism would increase the responsibility perception, and perceived agency and perceived patiency for AI would mediate this effect. Although the manipulation was not effective, multiple analyses confirmed the indirect effect of perceived patiency. In contrast, the effect of perceived agency of AI was somewhat mixed, which makes the hypothesis partially supported by the overall result. This result shows that for the moral status of artificial agents, perceived patiency is relatively more critical than perceived agency. These results support the organic perspective on the moral status that argues the importance of patiency, and show that patiency is more important than agency in the anthropomorphism related study of AI and robots.