Nicole Menard

Can artificial intelligence (AI) ever be (un)trustworthy? A growing number of philosophers argue that it cannot, because AI lacks some feature deemed essential for the trust relation, such as moral agency or being responsive to reasons. Here we propose a dilemma for these skeptics, based on the assumption that such theorists must either hold there is only one kind of trust (monism), or that there are multiple varieties of trust (pluralism). The first horn of the dilemma is that a monistic view of trust is implausible; no one analysis can capture all kinds of trust relationships. The second horn of the dilemma is that if such theorists adopt a pluralistic account of trust they have little reason to deny that AI is the sort of thing that can be trustworthy; while AI may fail to possess characteristics required for some kinds of trust relations, these are not necessary conditions for trustworthiness.