Michael Hahn

Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have given rise to AI Agents and Agentic AI. These systems are not only capable of performing narrowly defined tasks, but can also take on more complex activities with minimal to no human involvement. While there is already some technical research on these systems, their ethical evaluation has so far received little attention. This paper provides an initial perspective on how recent developments in AI Agents and Agentic AI relate to classical ethical principles in the context of AI, focusing on transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility and accountability, and privacy. To enable responsible development and deployment, we highlight three particularly crucial aspects of these systems: (1) their broad agency which (2) has a higher impact on human autonomy, leading to (3) an even deeper entanglement between humans and technology compared to traditional AI systems. Our analysis, which uses the method of the wide reflective equilibrium, serves as a starting point for ethical reflection and underscores the urgent need for ongoing interdisciplinary engagement to ensure that these novel AI systems are developed and used responsibly.

In diesem Beitrag wird untersucht, wie sich Veränderungen, die durch den Einsatz von KI im Gesundheitswesen entstehen, präzise erfassen und theoretisch einordnen lassen. Es wird gezeigt, wie sich mithilfe der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT) und des Konzepts technischer Vermittlung Verschiebungen von Handlungspotenzialen systematisch analysieren lassen (Komposition). Zudem werden Zielverlagerungen (Übersetzung) sowie neue Herausforderungen im Hinblick auf Transparenz (Reversibles Blackboxing) und Verantwortung (Delegation) durch KI-Agenten und Agentic AI deutlich erkennbar.

In their article ‘Consent-GPT: is it ethical to delegate procedural consent to conversational AI?’, Allen et al 1 explore the ethical complexities involved in handing over parts of the process of obtaining medical consent to conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, that is, AI-driven large language models (LLMs) trained to interact with patients to inform them about upcoming medical procedures and assist in the process of obtaining informed consent.1 They focus specifically on challenges related to accuracy (4–5), trust (5), privacy (5), click-through consent (5) and responsibility (5–6), alongside some pragmatic considerations (6). While the authors competently navigate these critical issues and present several key perspectives, we posit that their discussion on trust in what they refer to as ‘Consent-GPT’ significantly underestimates one vital factor: the interpersonal aspect of trust. Admittedly, this …

Ist Denken Reflexion "auf der Grenze" (Paul Tillich), so ist Kommunikation eigenen Denkens Vermittlung dieser Grenzerfahrung, die selbst an Grenzen stößt. Dies gilt erst recht in einer Gegenwart, in der durch Polarisierung, Propaganda und Hassreden elementare Bedingungen von Verständigungs- und Vermittlungsbemühungen nicht mehr anerkannt sind. Dabei stellt die Digitalisierung von Kommunikation eine zusätzliche Herausforderung dar, die sogar die Grundlagen einer liberal-rechtsstaatlichen Demokratie untergraben kann. Vor diesem Hintergrund bieten in diesem Band herausragende DenkerInnen aus ihrer jeweiligen Fachperspektive Grenzreflexionen rund um das Verhältnis von Theologie, Philosophie und Ethik im Kontext von Kirche, Politik und Öffentlichkeit.