An ethicist explains his 4 chief concerns about artificial intelligence
Elon Musk’s warning about artificial intelligence (AI) and Facebook bots’ creation of a language that humans can’t understand can conjure images of robots conquering the world in one’s mind. While such an apocalypse may be far-fetched, a more realistic consequence of AI already exists and warrants serious concern: AI’s ethical impact.
AI works, in part, because complex algorithms adeptly identify, remember, and relate data. Although such machine processing has existed for decades, the difference now is that very powerful computers process terabytes of data and deliver meaningful results in real-time. Moreover, some machines can do what had been the exclusive domain of humans and other intelligent life: Learn on their own.
It’s this automated learning that introduces a critical question: Can machines learn to be moral?
As a researcher schooled in scientific method and an ethicist immersed in moral decision-making, I know it’s challenging for humans to navigate concurrently the two disparate arenas. It’s even harder to envision how computer algorithms can enable machines to act morally.
Both academia and business use positive science to identify correlations and causality. The results of such study are reams of objective information. A mortgage lender’s algorithm, for instance, might find that borderline borrowers are most responsive to ads suggesting an interest rate increase the day after their favorite football team loses a big game. Data-crunching computers can identify that association and learn to deliver relevant ads.
Moral choice, however, doesn’t ask whether an action will produce an effective outcome; it asks if it is a good decision. In other words, regardless of efficacy, is it the right thing to do? Such analysis does not reflect an objective, data-driven decision but a subjective, judgment-based one.
Placing manipulative ads before a marginally-qualified and emotionally vulnerable target market may be very effective for the mortgage company, but many people would challenge the promotion’s ethicality. Humans can make that moral judgment, but how does a data-driven computer draw the same conclusion? Therein lies what should be a chief concern about AI.
Individuals often make moral decisions on the basis of principles like decency, fairness, honesty, and respect. To some extent, people learn those principles through formal study and reflection; however, the primary teacher is life experience, which includes personal practice and observation of others.
