Artificial moral cognition: Learning from developmental psychology

An artificial system that successfully performs cognitive tasks may pass tests of 'intelligence' but not yet operate in ways that are morally appropriate. An important step towards developing moral artificial intelligence (AI) is to build robust methods for assessing moral capacities in these systems. Here, we present a framework for analysing and evaluating moral capacities in AI systems, which decomposes moral capacities into tractable analytical targets and produces tools for measuring artificial moral cognition. We show that decomposing moral cognition in this way can shed light on the presence, scaffolding, and interdependencies of amoral and moral capacities in AI systems. Our analysis framework produces a virtuous circle, whereby developmental psychology can enhance how AI systems are built, evaluated, and iterated on as moral agents; and analysis of moral capacities in AI can generate new hypotheses surrounding mechanisms within the human moral mind.