Est-ce que vous compute? Code-switching, cultural identity, and AI

Abstract

Cultural code-switching concerns how we adjust our overall behaviours, manners of speaking, and appearance in response to a perceived change in our social environment. We defend the need to investigate cultural code-switching capacities in artificial intelligence systems. We explore a series of ethical and epistemic issues that arise when bringing cultural code-switching to bear on artificial intelligence. Building upon Dotson's (2014) analysis of testimonial smothering, we discuss how emerging technologies in AI can give rise to epistemic oppression, and specifically, a form of self-silencing that we call cultural smothering. By leaving the socio-dynamic features of cultural code-switching unaddressed, AI systems risk negatively impacting alreadymarginalised social groups by widening opportunity gaps and further entrenching social inequalities.

Moral dilemmas for moral machines

“…In the more general case of moral dilemmas as benchmarks, Bonnemains et al [21] explicitly reason as follows: since classic moral dilemmas have already been used as a basis for ethical reasoning, 'it seems legitimate to use some of them as a starting point for designing an automated ethical judgement on decisions' (43). Bjørgen et al [17] argue that certain types of ethical dilemmas 'can be used as benchmarks for estimating the ethical performance of an autonomous system' (23).…”

“…Of course, this approach raises all the usual problems of biased data, insofar as certain individuals are going to be overrepresentedi.e., those individuals from countries who have easy access to the internet. Falbo and LaCroix[43] argue that these considerations may exacerbate structural inequalities and mechanisms of oppressionalthough, they also note that 'more data' is not necessarily going to fix that, since the data are reflective of extant inequalities in society. However, it is crucial to note that the thing being measured in this case is not how ethical the decision is, but how closely the decision accords with the opinions of humans, on average.…”