A new study investigated the situations where the acceptance differs and why with stories that described medical cases. People accept the euthanasia decisions made by robots and AI less than those made by human doctors, finds a new study. The international study, led by the University of Turku in Finland, investigated people’s moral judgements on the decisions made by AI and robots as well as humans on end-of-life care regarding people in a coma.

The research team conducted the study in Finland, Czechia, and Great Britain by telling the research subjects stories that described medical cases. The project's Principal Investigator, University Lecturer Michael Laakasuo from the University of Turku, explains that the phenomenon where people hold some of the decisions made by AI and robots to a higher standard than similar decisions made by humans is called the Human-Robot moral judgement asymmetry effect.

However, it is still a scientific mystery in which decisions and situations the moral judgement asymmetry effect emerges. Our team studied various situational factors related to the emergence of this phenomenon and the acceptance of moral decisions, says Laakasuo. According to the research findings, the phenomenon where people were less likely to accept euthanasia decisions made by AI or a robot than by a human doctor occurred regardless of whether the machine was in an advisory role or the actual decision-maker.

If the decision was to keep the life-support system on, there was no judgement asymmetry between the decisions made by humans and Ai. However, in general, the research subjects preferred the decisions where life support was turned off rather than kept on. The difference in acceptance between human and AI decision-makers disappeared in situations where the patient, in the story told to the research subjects, was awake and requested euthanasia themselves, for example, by lethal injection.

Source: https://www.utu.fi/en/news/press-release/people-accept-euthanasia-decisions-made-by-ais-less-than-those-made-by-humans