AI RESEARCH
The Illusion of Opting in AI-Mediated Consequential Decisions
arXiv CS.AI
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ArXi:2605.28210v1 Announce Type: new Drawing on Ullmann-Margalit's concept of opting (transformative, irrevocable, and shadowed by foreclosed alternatives), we show that current AI systems raise a profound ethical problem that existing AI ethics has not fully captured: the illusion of opting, in which persons and groups encounter the deceptive appearance of meaningful consequential choice while the agency needed to become genuinely capable of choosing is weakened.