Images of Artificial Intelligence: a Blind Spot in AI Ethics

Abstract

This paper argues that the AI ethics has generally neglected the issues related to the science communication of AI. In particular, the article focuses on visual communication about AI and, more specifically, on the use of certain stock images in science communication about AI — in particular, those characterized by an excessive use of blue color and recurrent subjects, such as androgyne faces, half-flesh and half-circuit brains, and variations on Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. In the first section, the author refers to a “referentialist” ethics of science communication for an ethical assessment of these images. From this perspective, these images are unethical. While the ethics of science communication generally promotes virtues like modesty and humility, similar images are arrogant and overconfident. In the second section, the author uses French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concepts of “distribution of the sensible,” “disagreement,” and “pensive image.” Rancière’s thought paves the way to a deeper critique of these images of AI. The problem with similar images is not their lack of reference to the “things themselves.” It rather lies in the way they stifle any possible forms of disagreement about AI. However, the author argues that stock images and other popular images of AI are not a problem per se, and they can also be a resource. This depends on the real possibility for these images to support forms of pensiveness. In the conclusion, the question is asked whether the kind of ethics or politics of AI images proposed in this article can be applied to AI ethics tout court.

Microstock images of artificial intelligence: How AI creates its own conditions of possibility

“…The purpose of the article was to show the extent to which the mythologizing of AI is based on the revival of religious themes and tropes (such as that of creation) and that therefore the hypothesis of a secularized society is not entirely supportable. Romele (2022) studied the use of stock images of AI in science communication. He proposed that if there is an ethical problem with the use of these images, this does not lie in the fact (as the ethics of science communication argues) that they do not refer to what is really being done in research laboratories.…”

“…Romele (2022) studied the use of stock images of AI in science communication. He proposed that if there is an ethical problem with the use of these images, this does not lie in the fact (as the ethics of science communication argues) that they do not refer to what is really being done in research laboratories.…”

An Interweaving of Influences: How the Digital Environment Redefines Journalism

“…However, many works on ethics and AI have systematically neglected the narrative aspect. Romele (2022) notes that in the 881 pages of the New Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI there is not one mention of the role of communication. This absence is repeated in an extensive report of the Google subsidiary DeepMind on the ethical risks of Large Language Models (LLM, the technology behind advances such as GPT-3, LaMDA or ChatGPT).…”

To Each Technology Its Own Ethics: The Problem of Ethical Proliferation

“…Müller (2020) similarly discusses AI, but in combination with robot ethics, and includes specific discussions of bias, opacity, privacy and surveillance, machine ethics and machine morality, and the singularity. To top this off, some even argue that the scientific communication of advances in AI, and the selection of imagery and stock photos of AI or AI-related themes, is a part of AI ethics (Romele, 2022).…”