Responsibility Gap in AI: Revising Social Roles as the Basic Solution

Zargar, Zahra; Babaii, Saeedeh

doi:10.30465/ps.2026.54442.1827

Responsibility Gap in AI: Revising Social Roles as the Basic Solution

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Zahra Zargar ¹

Saeedeh Babaii ²

¹ Assistant Professor in Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Shahid Beheshti University

² PhD Graduate of Philosophy of Science and Technology from Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Administrator of Ethics Committee in Fahm Research Group

10.30465/ps.2026.54442.1827

Abstract

About two decades ago, “The Gap of Responsibility” as a problem was firstly introduced by Matthias for referring to an ethical challenge of AI. Due to their ability to learn, AI technologies are able to function beyond the control and anticipation of designers and users. Matthias argues that in this case, the necessary and sufficient conditions of responsibility wouldn’t be satisfied neither for designers, nor for users. And that is the gap of responsibility. The problem of responsibility gap has invited many researchers to explore for solutions. There is significant divergence among current accounts of responsibility gap, which mainly results from their basic theoretical assumptions. In this paper, we categorize the responses to three approaches: dissolving the problem, filling the gap by attributing responsibility to AI, and filling the gap by attributing responsibility to human agents. By analyzing the social and practical aspects of the concept of responsibility, we defend a compound, contextual, and gradual notion of responsibility. On this basis, we claim that two first approaches are not successful, due to being grounded on the poor concepts of responsibility. Hence, the third approach is more plausible. Moreover, since in the familiar cases of responsibility gap we fill the gap through revising social roles, in the case of AI-based responsibility gap we can follow the similar solution too, as suggested in some works of the third approach. Finally, we discuss some of remained challenges for the third approach.

Keywords

Responsibility

The Responsibility Gap

AI Ethics

AI Agency

Social Roles

Subjects