In AI We Trust: Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, and Reliability

Abstract

One of the main difficulties in assessing artificial intelligence (AI) is the tendency for people to anthropomorphise it. This becomes particularly problematic when we attach human moral activities to AI. For example, the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on AI (HLEG) have adopted the position that we should establish a relationship of trust with AI and should cultivate trustworthy AI (HLEG AI Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI, 2019, p. 35). Trust is one of the most important and defining activities in human relationships, so proposing that AI should be trusted, is a very serious claim. This paper will show that AI cannot be something that has the capacity to be trusted according to the most prevalent definitions of trust because it does not possess emotive states or can be held responsible for their actions—requirements of the affective and normative accounts of trust. While AI meets all of the requirements of the rational account of trust, it will be shown that this is not actually a type of trust at all, but is instead, a form of reliance. Ultimately, even complex machines such as AI should not be viewed as trustworthy as this undermines the value of interpersonal trust, anthropomorphises AI, and diverts responsibility from those developing and using them.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Marketing for Social Good—An Ethical Perspective

“…Third, we concur with prior research that considers trust as an outcome of ethical principles (e.g., Thiebes et al, 2020 ) and AI characteristics (e.g., Glikson and Wolley, 2020 ). Besides, others scholars even claim that “one needs to either change ‘trustworthy AI’ to ‘reliable AI’ or remove it altogether” (Ryan, 2020 , p. 2765). Therefore, we refrained from presenting trust as an ethical principle in itself.…”

“…Fourth, the principle trust constitutes a critical ethical issue in AI governance. However, it is not without opposition and ambiguity, particularly, whether trust is a principle in itself or rather an outcome of other foundational principles (e.g., Floridi, 2019;Glikson & Wolley, 2020;Ryan, 2020;Thiebes et al, 2020). Although the principle solidarity refers to redistributing the benefits of AI to not jeopardize social cohesion (Jobin et al, 2019), it is featured in only 6 out of 84 documents.…”

Building trust when using artificial intelligence

“…Подобного мнения придерживается и М. Райан [Ryan, 2020], сотрудник Королевского технологического института. По мнению этого автора, доверие как термин нельзя применять к ИИ.…”

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“…Technology characteristics, especially the performance of the technology, its process and purpose contribute to its difference from other type trust (Siau & Wang, 2018). The features of trustworthy AI were discussed, such as transparency, reliability, beneficence (Schmidt et al, 2020; Ryan, 2020; Thiebes et al, 2020). Nowadays human‐center study has developed to explore trust building in human‐AI.…”