Avatars as Proxies

What is the proxy relation? In simple terms, a proxy is an entity that stands for another entity. However, not everything that ‘stands for’ is a proxy in the full sense of the word. Floridi (2015) notes that acting by proxy is possible because something both represents and replaces something else. Floridi calls this the ‘vicarious’ relation.

Proxy: P is a proxy for R if and only if P both ‘stands for’ R and can ‘stand in for’ R.

According to Floridi, two ‘degenerate’ proxy relations follow: signs and surrogates.

If P has a vicarious relation with (i.e. it is a proxy for) R with a zero degree of ‘standing in for’ R, P is a degenerate proxy that only stands for, but cannot behave on behalf, or act instead, of R. Such degenerate proxies are signs. Similarly, if P has a vicarious relation with R but now with a zero degree of ‘standing for’ R, then P is another kind of degenerate proxy, one that only behaves on behalf, or acts instead, of R without referring to it. Such degenerate proxies are surrogates. (2015: 488)

Floridi notes a possible further division of the first kind of degenerate proxies, sign-proxies, into icons, indexes and symbols but for our purposes it will be enough to note that a sign-proxy is something that signifies another entity and cannot stand in for it. A good example of this kind of proxy relationship is that between a word and the object that it signifies. A word can stand for the object that it signifies but it cannot stand in for it—you cannot take a drink from the word ‘cup’.

Floridi states:

[…] proxies are pragmatically more than signs because they are signifiers that also stand in for the signified and so you can interact with them instead of interacting with the signified. And they are epistemologically more than surrogates, because they are signifiers you can interact with that refer to the signified they replace, so you can still perceive the difference. (2015: 489)

Floridi’s paper is insightful but brief and the distinctions are subtle. Floridi does not himself discuss the potential proxy relation as it might arise between a human and an avatar. In the rest of this section, I develop Floridi’s framework and use it to make sense of potential avatar-human proxy relationships.

In identifying whether a proxy relation is degenerate or non-degenerate it helps to consider who is deemed responsible when the proxy performs an action. For, as Floridi notes, it is only when the proxy relationship is non-degenerate that the actions of the proxy are considered to be the actions of the represented agent. The two degenerate proxies fall short of this in different ways. The sign-proxy is not taken to stand in for the agent at all, so the actions of a sign cannot be understood to be the actions of the represented agent. The surrogate-proxy falls short in a different way. The surrogate stands in for you, perhaps in the sense of performing some action that you require, but the link that connects you and the surrogate fails. Floridi does not make this observation but it seems plausible that the link can fail to obtain in (at least) two ways. The link might never have been there in the first place. For example, if you ask someone to keep your place in line, they are standing in for you but do not stand for you. You could not reasonably be held responsible for their actions. Second, it seems possible that a non-degenerate proxy relation might deteriorate into a degenerate proxy relation if the community forgets or rejects the signifying aspect of the relationship. Imagine, for example, that Bill can no longer make community council meetings and asks John to attend as his proxy. Initially the council members see John as standing for and standing in for Bill. Over time, despite the fact that John faithfully acts in ways that represent Bill, the community council interact with John as John and think of him no longer as Bill’s representative but as an agent in his own right. In such a case it seems that the proxy relation could begin to fail. The risk arises particularly in situations where, over time, we stop being able to perceive the difference between the proxy and the thing it stands for. (Floridi, 2015) When that referencing relation fails, the ability to reasonably hold the agent responsible for the proxy’s action can fail with it. That this is possible highlights another significant feature of the proxy relationship, that it is not a strict contractual relationship but a pre-legal arrangement, established by mutual consent and maintained by community recognition. (MacPherson, 2010)

What are the responsibilities of the proxy and the represented agent? ³ Millar (2014) notes that the ideal proxy-decision is the one that the agent would choose if they were in a position to make the judgement themselves. In fact, there is a sense in which the ideal proxy decision-maker is not making a decision at all—they are simply channelling or acting as a conduit for the decision of the agent. For example, if you are my designated healthcare proxy and I have made it clear to you that I would like to donate my organs if anything happens to me, to fulfil the role of proxy it is your duty to make my wishes known, regardless of your own views on organ donation.

But the reality is that often proxy decision-makers do not have all of the information that they would need in order to reach the decision that the agent would make. For example, you may be my medical proxy but at the time of an accident we have never discussed my organ donor preferences, so you are expected to somehow fill the gap in your knowledge. However, even in such cases, as proxy you must remove your own preferences from the decision-making. You are expected to think about what my organ donation preferences might be, given other things that you know about me, or to look for other supporting evidence.

Another feature of a proxy arrangement is that it usually has limits placed on it. Consider the situation in which Bill has chosen John as a proxy to vote on his behalf at a local council meeting. While attending the meeting John starts to pick a fight with another attendee. When he casts the vote John’s actions counts as Bill’s actions. Moreover, Bill is responsible for the consequences of those actions. However, this does not extend to John’s general behaviour at the meeting: Bill could not reasonably be held responsible for John’s violence, nor for the consequences of that violence. Despite John being Bill’s proxy at the meeting, the proxy arrangement starts and ends with the casting of the vote. These limits of the proxy relationship between John and Bill may have been explicitly drawn but it is more likely that they were implicit, made clear by the history of proxy voting arrangements and the context of the agreement.

In Sect. 3 I consider how these features—the lack of clearly defined limits to the proxy arrangement and the epistemic gap that proxies will often face—might play out in the case of avatar proxies. But first, what kinds of avatars are likely to be relevant to a proxy relationship?

There are some risks that arise indirectly through having an avatar proxy. Any proxy arrangement could be misused to cause some kind of harm. I could manipulate your proxy to vote a different way, or your proxy could be used to purposefully misrepresent you. I noted above that the actions of the proxy will only count as those of the represented agent in defined contexts, so we might think that the reputational risk starts and ends with actions that fall within those contexts. However, it seems plausible that the very act of putting in place a proxy relationship can have a reputational consequence for the agent. In the body of literature on the question of player responsibility with regards to the actions of their gaming avatars it is sometimes proposed that any considerations of moral responsibility for the avatar’s actions apply only to the actions that the player controls. However, even cut scenes—scenes in which the player character can be seen to perform acts that are not controlled by the player—can indirectly reflect on the moral character of the player. In the game Custer’s Revenge there is a cut scene in which the player character Custer rapes a Native American woman. Patridge (2011) convincingly argues that playing a game with this cut scene reflects badly on the player. Patridge proposes that this is because gaining enjoyment from such a game reflects on the player’s moral character. However, this explanation doesn’t explain an asymmetry between playing such a game and choosing to watch a movie with a rape scene in it, which doesn’t seem to reflect on the viewer’s moral character in the same way. In both situations a person is voluntarily and passively watching a depiction of rape. It seems to me that what is different in the gaming example is the fact that the player has chosen to establish a (degenerate) proxy relationship with a character who would act in such a way and that the choice to establish this particular proxy relationship reflects poorly on the moral character of the player; the player is tainted by (proxy) association. This is some evidence for the fact that the very act of choosing a particular character or person to represent you can reflect on your moral character. This indicates that, contra the example of Bill and John in Sect. 1.2, a person might well be judged or tainted by the actions of their proxy beyond those actions that strictly fall under the proxy arrangement, purely in virtue of their choice of proxy.¹²

The most significant risk of direct harm is that proxies open the represented person up to being personally responsible for actions that are not within their control. In Sect. 1 I noted two features of proxy representations. The first is that when a proxy, A, both stands for and stands in for a person, B, B is responsible for A’s actions. I also described an epistemic gap that will arise when a proxy has to decide how to act without explicit instructions. I gave an example in which a proxy does not have explicit information on how to proceed but is responsible for casting a vote on the represented person’s behalf. The obvious risk in such a case is that the proxy can make a decision or undertake an action that the represented agent is responsible for but that the latter had no direct part in making. Furthermore, it is left unclear how the proxy might appropriately fill the epistemic gap.

The risk that comes from the proxy epistemic gap can arise even in quite tightly constrained cases. For example, you may have given your proxy strict instructions on who to vote for at the local council election apparently eliminating any risk of misrepresentation, but you may not have specified what the proxy should do if your preferred candidate pulls out of the race. Should your proxy abstain, or should they choose another candidate for you? Or, to take another example, if your preferred candidate is exposed as a fraud right before the vote is to be cast, is your proxy right to still vote for them even if they don’t know how you would respond to this updated information?

What are the duties of proxies in cases where they are faced with an epistemic gap? In particular, where is it appropriate for them to look for supporting or countervailing evidence and how should they balance these kinds of evidence? A human proxy might first try to fall back on adjacent preferences. For example, if a medical proxy knows that the person they are representing was in favour of donating their organs on their death, and they are asked whether the represented person’s body could be donated to medical science, they might use the willingness for organ donation as evidence of amenability to body donation. On the other hand, if they also know that the person had wanted a traditional funeral this might be evidence to be counted against donating their body to science. The proxy has a responsibility to balance these considerations. Beyond that the proxy might seek to gather more information, perhaps by asking the represented person’s friends or relatives for their opinion of what the preferences might be. But how is the testimony of different individuals to be weighted? Is testimonial evidence of more recent interactions to be given more significance than that of historic interactions?

The important point here is that, on reflection, the limits, scope and even the basic mechanics of the proxy relation turn out to be incredibly ill-defined and vague. And this is not just a feature of a lazy set up; the epistemic gap arises because the proxy relation is trying to replicate as closely as possible the mechanics of personal action and decision-making, something that is sensitive to numerous small changes in context.

The epistemic gap is a particularly significant concern in the case of avatar proxies. With human proxies the epistemic gap is left to be filled in an ad hoc, ‘common sense’ way. How could the epistemic gap be filled with an avatar proxy? The obvious approach would be for the avatar proxy to be enabled with some form of intelligent decision support system; the kinds of systems that are currently used to assist decision-making in areas such as finance, healthcare, marketing, commerce, and cybersecurity. These are systems that are designed to mimic human cognitive capabilities in some way. There are familiar concerns about the reliability of such systems. The high-profile cases are the ones that have made it to court such as the use of COMPAS to inform court sentencing and the use of algorithmic tools to evaluate teacher performance in some US states. (Rubel et al., 2021) But there are likely to be many more hidden examples where, for example, an automated decision system has resulted in unfair treatment to an individual through the rejection of a loan application or a decision to remove their candidacy from a pool of potential job applicants. As Rubel et el. (2021) put it, ‘There is widespread recognition that there are ethical issues surrounding complex algorithmic systems and that there is a great deal of work to be done to better understand them.’ (Rubel et al., 10).

Note how the situation of the avatar proxy decision maker differs from those familiar cases of algorithmic harms. In those cases, it is difficult to know where to lay the blame when things go wrong: Is the algorithm designer to blame? The people who selected the data set? The organisation who utilised the system to make decision? In the avatar proxy case, the proxy arrangement identifies the responsible agent for us. Under a proxy arrangement the represented individual will directly and personally bear the consequences of mishaps and the responsibility for any resulting harm to others. That is, we have already identified the significant negative consequences resulting from actions informed by algorithmic decision systems; the avatar proxy arrangement brings those decisions into the realm of personal action, with all of the personal responsibility that follows from it.

Even leaving catastrophic harms aside, there are less significant wrong decisions that could impact on one’s reputation or, minimally, on one’s sense of self. We have daily evidence of how it feels when algorithms get us wrong; the recommendations of music and books that widely miss the mark and the suggestions of things you might like to buy. Being ‘misunderstood’ or miscategorised by algorithms can feel like a personal insult. Imagine how it will feel when these mistakes are performed publicly by an avatar proxy that is representing you. Even small and apparently innocuous poor choices could impact on the reputation that you have with others, and perhaps ultimately on your own sense of self.

There is a further concern arising from the availability of avatar proxies. Consider again the example of using an avatar proxy in the workplace. The motivation in the example as it was described came from the employee themselves. But there may also be a sinister motivation for employers to encourage avatar-employee proxies. Danaher (2016) has written on the retribution gaps that can arise when an AI system causes some undesirable outcome. In the absence of a human to be held accountable for the outcome, impacted people can sometimes turn to the leaders of organisations or the owners of the relevant technology company to seek retribution. A leader who was eager to redirect responsibility for the actions of their organisations might be motivated to establish proxy relations between employees and avatar representations of them, to provide a plausible associated responsible human agent on which to hang the blame if things go wrong. That is, proxy AI systems could provide a direct route to a ‘responsible’ human agent to act as scapegoat, despite the epistemic gap that will exist between the agent and their proxy.

We might think that an avatar proxy could be given explicit instructions on how to act and that this would remove the risk that arises from the epistemic gap. But real-world contexts are incredibly fine-grained making it unlikely or even impossible that all eventualities can be considered in advance. As such, in order to be useful, we will need to have avatar proxies that can respond to unforeseen circumstances. Perhaps the risk could be averted if we made it that the avatar would simply not make a decision when faced with an epistemic gap? This won’t work for two reasons. First, as noted above, the fine-grained nature of decision contexts means that epistemic gaps between the avatar and the represented person are likely to be ubiquitous so this restriction would severely reduce the usefulness of the proxy arrangement. Second, a decision not to act due to epistemic limitations could have its own significant consequences; that is, we can be liable for the negative consequences of acts of omission as well as those of performance. (Clarke, 2022)

As I have introduced the notion of a person’s responsibility for the actions of their avatar proxy it follows from the conditions of the proxy arrangement itself; when a full (non-degenerate) proxy relation obtains, the represented person is responsible for their proxy’s actions. As such, whenever we judge that a full proxy relation exists between an agent and their avatar, the responsibility condition kicks in. One might question whether this would actually be the case. Would we actually hold individuals responsible for actions that their avatar proxies perform in either real or virtual environments? I see no reason why we would not. The actions of such proxies can have real-life consequences and, as Danaher (2016) noted, in such situations we tend to look for someone to be held accountable for them; the represented agent who voluntarily entered into the proxy arrangement is the obvious ‘someone’. Existing traditional proxy arrangements set precedent for such lines of responsibility. And even if we try and force a gap between the avatar proxy and the represented person, perhaps arguing that the avatar proxy representing the person is more like an employee relation than a standing-in-for relation, under the legal theory of ‘respondeat superior’, an employer is responsible for the acts or omissions of its employees. (Thornton, 2010) Either way, when looking for someone to hold responsible for an avatar proxy’s actions, it seems inevitable that the represented person will be liable.

Clearly there are significant personal risks that arise directly from the avatar proxy relation. In order to limit these risks an ad hoc or common-sense approach to proxy arrangements will not do. We need to understand the precise limits of the proxy relation, the responsibilities of the proxy and the responsibilities of the represented agent. But increasingly sophisticated avatar proxies are being introduced without any such clarity.

The significant question we should ask ourselves is, is it possible for the loosely defined human-to-human proxy relationship to be transferred to avatar proxies in a way that doesn’t expose us to significant personal risk? If not, we would be well-advised to be wary of the creeping use of avatar proxy representation.