Could Artificial Intelligence (AI) Become a Responsible Agent: Artificial Agency (AA)?

Abstract

Responding to concerns that superintelligent AI could escape human control, this paper argues that the true existential question is not intelligence but agency, and that artificial intelligence as currently conceived poses no threat of responsible agency. Intelligence can be fully artificial and beneficial (books, databases, algorithms) without ever bearing responsibility. Responsibility belongs exclusively to agents, specifically biological agents. Biological agency requires causal independence, intentionality, creativity, and above all the active harnessing of stochasticity to generate novel, goal-directed behavior that is neither predetermined nor merely random. Organisms achieve this at every level—from ion channels and immune-system hypermutation to neural decision-making and social anticipation—by constraining chance rather than eliminating it. Choice in living systems resembles poker rather than chess: iterative, intuitive, socially embedded, and inherently unpredictable even in principle. Algorithmic systems, even those incorporating randomness, cannot replicate this multi-level process. Creating genuine artificial agency would demand reproducing biology’s constrained use of stochasticity across scales. Only then could a machine become a responsible (or irresponsible) agent. If achieved, the distinction between living and artificial would collapse, raising profound ethical questions. Until then, the risk lies not in AI itself but in failing to regulate research that might inadvertently cross this threshold.

Keywords: biological agents, stochasticity, responsibility, intentionality