Hume’s Guillotine in Designing Ethically Intelligent Technologies

Abstract

Intelligent machines can follow ethical rules in their behaviour. However, it is less clear whether intelligent systems can also create new ethical principles. The former position can be called weak ethical AI and the latter strong ethical AI. Hume's guillotine which claims that one cannot derive values from facts appears to be a fundamental obstacle to strong ethical AI. The analysis of human ethical information processes provides clarity to the possibility of strong ethical AI. Human ethical information processing begins with positive of negative emotions associated to situations. Situations can be seen as consequences of actions and for this reason people can define rules about acceptability of typical actions. Finally, socio-ethical discourse create general ethical rules. Intelligent systems can provide important support in ethical process and thus the difference between weak and strong ethical AI is polar.