MoReBench: Evaluating Procedural and Pluralistic Moral Reasoning in Language Models, More than Outcomes
arXiv:2510.16380v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As AI systems progress, we rely more on them to make decisions with us and for us. To ensure that such decisions are aligned with human values, it is imperative for us to understand not only what decisions they make but also how they come to those decisions. Reasoning language models, which provide both final responses and (partially transparent) intermediate thinking traces, present a timely opportunity to study AI procedural reasoning. Unlike math and code problems which often have objectively correct answers, moral dilemmas are an excellen
As AI systems advance to making complex decisions, understanding their moral reasoning is critical for reliable and ethical deployment, particularly with increased public and regulatory scrutiny on AI safety and alignment.
Evaluating the procedural and pluralistic moral reasoning of language models moves beyond mere outcome assessment, providing crucial insight into AI's decision-making processes, which is foundational for trust and integration into human society.
The focus expands from 'what' decisions AI makes to 'how' it arrives at those decisions, enabling a more nuanced understanding and potential steering of AI behavior in ethically complex scenarios.
- · AI ethics researchers
- · AI developers focused on transparency
- · Regulatory bodies
- · Organizations deploying AI in sensitive domains
- · AI developers prioritizing speed over interpretability
- · Black-box AI systems
- · Organizations reluctant to audit AI decisions
MoReBench establishes a new benchmark for evaluating AI's moral reasoning, pushing the AI community to develop more transparent and ethically aligned models.
Improved understanding of AI's moral reasoning could accelerate the development of agentic AI systems that make decisions in complex, real-world ethical dilemmas, with greater public acceptance.
The ability to audit and understand AI's ethical decision pathways could fundamentally alter legal and philosophical frameworks surrounding AI responsibility and autonomy, potentially paving the way for AI to be recognized as a 'moral agent'.
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