On Good and Evil, the Mistaken Idea That Technology Is Ever Neutral, and the Importance of the Double-Charge Thesis

Abstract

The lively debate about the ethical impact of digital technologies, from social media to artificial intelligence (AI), is having many interesting side effects. Philosophically, it is forcing us to consider new conceptual issues and reconsider old ones in new lights. It is against this background that I wish to discuss a special relation between good and evil: their equilibrium in digital artefacts.The current debate about AI is rife with remarks about the neutrality of the technology and, therefore, the need to legislate its uses (deployment) rather than its design or development. Such remarks are trite. They are also mistaken. Let me explain.Recently, an expert told me, as a matter of course, that the problem with AI is that it is a neutral technology that can be equally used for good or evil. It is just common sense, they added. They continued by mansplaining to me that, given such neutrality, the problem was one of misuse, not of poor, misled, or evil design or development. Tools are tools, technology will be developed anyway, and it is up to people to use it for the right or wrong purposes. The conclusion was that the scientists and engineers creating any technology, AI included (and the business people commercialising it, insofar as they are not seen as end users, I add), were innocent or at least not guilty. Culprits must be found further along in the process that leads to ethical disasters, not in the design and development, but in the deployment of the specific technology, to use the familiar, tripartite D-analysis. I guess one could say the same about guns. People kill people, not guns, I am told. People mistreat people, not AI. Put it this way, and it sounds suspicious. There is some truth in it, surely, but it is a shallow truth that hides a deeper point: which people? The designers, the distributors, those who profit from the technology, the users, or those who allow the artefacts (AI, guns, paper clippers, or whatever you wish to choose) to be available? I waited, listening. Guns were not mentioned (incoherently, I would add), but I was not * Luciano Floridi

All too human? Identifying and mitigating ethical risks of Social AI

“…Matters get only more complicated when we consider how Social AI might have (even unintended) influences on users' social, ethical, or political views. While it may be feasible to design a Social AI system that specifically refrained from offering opinions on who the user should vote for or which religion they should follow, the hope of building total value-neutrality into the system -or arguably any technology [55] -looks less tractable. Moreover, given that normative considerations loom large in many aspects of everyday discourse, from purchasing decisions to discussions of music or literature, the appeal of chatting with a system that lacked any normative views of its own would likely rapidly pall.…”