The ethics of artificial intelligence

Abstract

The possibility of creating thinking machines raises a host of ethical issues. These questions relate both to ensuring that such machines do not harm humans and other morally relevant beings, and to the moral status of the machines themselves. The first section discusses issues that may arise in the near future of AI. The second section outlines challenges for ensuring that AI operates safely as it approaches humans in its intelligence. The third section outlines how we might assess whether, and in what circumstances, AIs themselves have moral status. In the fourth section, we consider how AIs might differ from humans in certain basic respects relevant to our ethical assessment of them. The final section addresses the issues of creating AIs more intelligent than human, and ensuring that they use their advanced intelligence for good rather than ill.

Consciousness and Moral Status

“…These are problems to do with the structure of society, the distribution of resources in economies that rely on highly functional machines, dangers to humans associated with an artificial intelligence explosion, and so on. That is not my focus here (but see Gunkel 2012 ;Bostrom and Yudkowsky 2014 ). My focus is on the value potentially present in the conscious mental lives of conscious machines, and how my account of phenomenal value might help us to reflect upon relevant potentialities.…”

A Review of Future and Ethical Perspectives of Robotics and AI

“…First, the engineers developing systems need to be aware of possible ethical challenges that should be considered including avoiding misuse and allowing for human inspection of the functionality of the algorithms and systems (Bostrom and Yudkowsky, 2014). Second, when moving toward advanced autonomous systems, the systems should themselves be able to do ethical decision making to reduce the risk of unwanted behavior (Wallach and Allen, 2009).…”

Trustworthiness of Autonomous Systems

“…Perhaps more frightening is a future where AS knows how to manipulate consent and trust in humans [10]. This is a situation where we trust an AS because it is clever enough to manufacture our trust.…”