{"id":219120,"date":"2025-07-31T04:26:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T09:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/ai-can-evolve-to-feel-guilt-but-only-in-certain-social-environments"},"modified":"2025-07-31T04:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T09:26:22","slug":"ai-can-evolve-to-feel-guilt-but-only-in-certain-social-environments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/ai-can-evolve-to-feel-guilt-but-only-in-certain-social-environments","title":{"rendered":"AI can evolve to feel guilt\u2014but only in certain social environments"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Guilt is a highly advantageous quality for society as a whole. It might not prevent initial wrongdoings, but guilt allows humans to judge their own prior judgments as harmful and prevents them from happening again. The internal distress caused by feelings of guilt often\u2014but not always\u2014results in the person taking on some kind of penance to relieve themselves from internal turmoil. This might be something as simple as admitting their wrongdoing to others and taking on a slight stigma of someone who is morally corrupt. This upfront cost might be initially painful, but can relieve further guilt and lead to better cooperation for the group in the future.<\/p>\n

As we interact more and more with artificial intelligence<\/a> and use it in almost every aspect of our modern society, finding ways to instill ethical decision-making becomes more critical. In a recent study, published<\/a> in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface<\/i>, researchers used game theory<\/a> to explore how and when guilt evolves in multi-agent systems.<\/p>\n

The researchers used the \u201cprisoners\u2019 dilemma\u201d\u2014a game where two players must choose between cooperating and defecting. Defecting provides an agent with a higher payoff, but they must betray their partner. This, in turn, makes it more likely that the partner will also defect. However, if the game is repeated over and over, cooperation<\/a> results in a better payoff for both agents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guilt is a highly advantageous quality for society as a whole. It might not prevent initial wrongdoings, but guilt allows humans to judge their own prior judgments as harmful and prevents them from happening again. The internal distress caused by feelings of guilt often\u2014but not always\u2014results in the person taking on some kind of penance [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1509,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}