he notion of “responsibility gap” was originally introduced in the philosophical debate to indicate the concern that the introduction in society of machine learning may make more difficult or impossible to attribute moral culpability to persons for untoward eventscaused by intelligence machines. Building on literature in moral and legal philosophy, and ethics of technology, I propose a broader and more comprehensive analysis of the responsibility gap. The responsibility gap, I argue, is not one problem but a set of at least four interconnected problems – gaps in culpability, moral and public accountability, active responsibility - caused by different sources, some technical, other organisational, legal, ethical and societal.
Responsibility gaps may also happen in systems not including learning or autonomous technologies. I will analyse the sources of these different gaps, explain why the matter, and criticize some existing proposed partial solutions. I will also outline a more comprehensive approach to address the responsibility gaps in their entirety, based on the idea of designing socio-technical systems for “meaningful human control".
