For quite some time, I have been working on an initiative to help spark first level digital productivity, ranging from "7 - 11 year olds of all ages," through initial multimedia authoring and a first functional programming course. In the course of further work on Unit 1, I have been led to address "AI":
<<AI promises to transform technology, industry and how we live and work. Arguably, it is driving the second Info-Comms Technology (ICT) economic long wave, with massive creation and destruction of wealth ahead . . . and already in progress. To function and prosper in tomorrow's world, we will need to be able to appreciate and be productive in an age of super smart machines. So, then, this course is a larval stage for building a desirable future for our region.
Such will of course require considerable attention to not only the obvious safety, privacy, rights and security issues, but also to ethical principles, practices and habits at personal, educational, institutional, business, community and global levels. Precisely, as AI systems, increasingly, are "capable of performing complex tasks that historically only a human could do, such as reasoning, making decisions, or solving problems." Power or capability, clearly, entails duties to do good, be prudent ("first, do no harm"), act wisely, and be honourable. Where, as AI is in reality "CI" -- canned intelligence, such ethical behaviour has to start with us. As, it is we who design, organise, program, inform and guide the AI. For example, AI has potential to help create an all-seeing surveillance state, a totalitarian horror that would more than fulfill anything in the notorious AD 95 passage in the Apocalypse, that no one could buy or sell save those who took the notorious mark of the beast. It is only us who can safeguard our liberty.
More broadly, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy outlines:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are digital technologies that will have significant impact on the development of humanity in the near future. They have raised fundamental questions about what we should do with these systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve, and how we can control these . . . . [Key issues include]: Ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e., tools made and used by humans. This includes issues of privacy (§2.1) and manipulation (§2.2), opacity (§2.3) and bias (§2.4), human-robot interaction (§2.5), employment (§2.6), and the effects of autonomy (§2.7). Then AI systems as subjects, i.e., ethics for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (§2.8) and artificial moral agency (§2.9). Finally, the problem of a possible future AI superintelligence leading to a “singularity” (§2.10). [In, Vincent C Mueller, 2020, "Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics."]
Beyond this, AI ethics points to broader ethics of computing and information, thence general ethics. As ethics is now too often inadequately framed, a good first reference for both the AI concerns and broader aspects of ethics, is Cicero's branch- on- which- we- all- sit, built-in first duties:
The naturally evident, first duties and first, built in law that built our civilisation. Manifestly, the habitually untruthful, unreasonable, imprudent, unfair (so, untrustworthy) person is not someone who we readily, safely do business with. So, too, as Aristotle pointed out in The Rhetoric, Bk 1 Ch 13, "there is a general idea of just and unjust in accordance with nature," noting from Sophocles' Antigone, how "neither to-day nor yesterday, but from all eternity, these statutes live and no man knoweth whence they came . . . " Further, we may adapt Aquinas' summary: the good (especially, the just) is to be done and evil avoided. Thus, we see outlined core principles of the natural, intelligible, conscience attested law that indeed helped to build our civilisation. And yes, such first duties include duties and first principles of prudent, sound reasoning, as well as pointing to the famous (and, for cause, still widely influential) ten commandments, as "duties to neighbour" suggests. As the Apostle Paul put it, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law," having earlier noted how when people "by nature do what the law requires," they thus "show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them." [Rom. 13:10, 2:14 - 15; cf. Exodus 20:1 - 17, Deut 6:1 - 9, Lev 19:15 - 18 and Matt 22:34 - 40 for relevant but frequently overlooked context.] Where, too, the historic vision holds that God -- our utterly wise and inherently good, eternal root and sustainer -- is manifestly our first neighbour, and our host ("in him we live, and move and have our being" [Ac 17:38]). Thus, for good reason, in our God-fearing region God is widely understood to be the ultimate, adequate source of moral government; being the root level is who by goodness and wisdom properly grounds ought. Such ethical theism is therefore pro-civilisational, something that needs to be said in a day where "religion" is too often, increasingly treated as if it were a dirty word. Moreover, this draws out that ethics is tied to the root of our worldviews, even as we can see that there are indeed self evident first duties we should all heed. Bottom-line: morally sound character counts, in AI, in wider computing, in general business, in community and in civilisation. So, among other things, AI brings the ethical issues of computing in society to a sharp focus.>>
In so doing, it draws attention to the ethical hole in our civilisation, and the urgent need to fill it. First, as computing and information technology sectors are extremely fast moving, capable of transforming the economy and society at unprecedented rates. So, if we make big, Acts 27 voyage of folly blunders, we can now shipwreck our civilisation very rapidly indeed. And not just through the folly of a nuclear war; already we see troubling signs of lawless authoritarian ideologies reaching for mass surveillance and for censorship, even as they marginalise, brand, target and polarise against today's version of Emanuel Goldstein in Orwell's 1984. And, it is clear that computerised theft of elections is very possible, especially if backed by the unaccountable administrative state and wider "establishment." The AI-empowered deep state is all too real.
But, the problem is deeper than that.
For, in recent centuries and decades, we have seen increasingly dominating influence of worldviews and cultural/policy agendas that have in them no root level IS that can properly found OUGHT. Radical relativism, emotivism, subjectivism, hyperskepticism and associated atheism (usually dressed up in a lab coat) have run the board, as "religion," especially our Hebraic-Christian inheritance, has been turned into a dirty word through utterly imbalanced emphasis on the sins and follies of Christendom. That want of balance, indeed, was a challenge for drafting the above cited note.
So, let me pause and highlight from the Ciceronian first duties that indeed, there are branch on which we all sit, inescapable first principles and first duties: to try to object, one cannot but appeal to the same. As this excites strong emotions, let us simply point out that such objections would include: that's not true, or you have to prove that, or you only think you know that, or that's not fair, or that's only your view you are trying to impose on us, etc. All of these, in fact, directly appeal to the said seven first duties: truth, right reason, warrant and wider prudence, duties to neighbour so to fairness and justice. In short, instant absurdity on attempted denial. Just as it says on the tin, self-evident, known moral first truths, first duties and first law.
We can broaden the result, as morality, M, is reasonably identifiable as that subject that addresses duty, virtue, honour, goodness (vs evil) right (vs wrong), justice (vs injustice) etc. So, the claim that there is no warranted, objective knowledge about morality, ~k(M), is about M, is intended to be objective knowledge, and properly belongs to M. So, the attempted denial -- were it ever successful -- would imply that ~k(M) is an objective, known moral truth. Oops. So, it is false by self contradiction. Instead, we freely assert ~[~k(M)] = k(M). There undeniably is objectively knowable moral truth, starting with this one. In that light, the similarly self evident status of the first duties is unsurprising.
From this, we can revisit the seemingly invincible hyperskepticism, relativism and emotivism etc of our day. For, objectively warranted, known moral truths defeat hyperskepticism, relativism and subjectivism etc. They may hold dominant influence, handing power elites the ability to impose otherwise indefensible perverse, ill advised policies. But, they are dead, doomed to dry up.
And, it is readily seen that there is but one serious candidate reality root that properly grounds Ought.
Again, our challenge:
Yes, we see here, the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. Those who dismiss, reject or evade, need to put forth another candidate that coherently bridges the is-ought gap: __________
That blank will prove hard to fill indeed, as the confusions and unsettled state of ethics in our day will readily substantiate.
This has long been important, the rise of AI now makes it utterly urgent. END
