Transformations of Responsibility in the Age of Automation: Being Answerable to Human and Non-Human Others

Especially in the realm of technology, big data, and new media it is questionable if our traditional understanding of responsibility is able to face current challenges—mostly due to its restricted focus on the autonomous, self-sufficient, individual human being as the genuine responsible agent. The possibility of ascribing responsibility to artificial systems or in cases in which we cannot reduce responsibility to a limited and clearly defined group of responsible persons has recently been challenged. In such cases, our conventional methods of identifying individual human agents as the solely feasible responsible agents—or as other important functions within the relational setup of the traditional concept of responsibility such as the addressee and the authority—frequently fail. We need to question and move beyond a traditional understanding of responsibility in order to update it for these and further challenges.