Habituation and the Human Will: How Passive Reliance on Human-AI Collaboration Erodes Ethical Agency to Prevent It
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the ethical significance of habituation in human–AI interaction. It argues that repeated reliance on artificial intelligence can progressively reshape the capacities through which ethical agency is exercised. Drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics, autonomy-supportive design, and accounts of techno-moral formation, the paper shifts attention from isolated outputs and individual decisions to the diachronic effects of recurrent interaction. It develops a normative framework organised around six analytically distinct but causally interconnected dimensions of ethical agency: human agency, moral judgment, ethical awareness, autonomy, human intention, and second-order agency. The analysis identifies interactional and institutional mechanisms through which these capacities may be weakened, including habitual default acceptance, sycophantic reinforcement, deceptive design, goal drift, opaque delegation, and reverse-centaur workflows. On this basis, the paper proposes ten actionable recommendations for AI design, education, and governance. These recommendations specify conditions under which AI can support reflective judgment, meaningful control, revisable delegation, and co-intelligent collaboration rather than habituated dependence. The central claim is that AI systems should not be evaluated solely by their technical performance or immediate decision quality. They should also be assessed by the human dispositions and capacities that their repeated use helps to cultivate.
Source: Science and Engineering Ethics
Author: Francisco Herrera
Institution: Universidad de Granada
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,090
Award: G7817754989
OpenAlex ID: W7203684453