Ethical Challenges of AI

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

New artificial intelligence systems that mimic and surpass human cognitive activity pose novel and profound ethical challenges. Should we entrust consequential decisions about credit, criminal justice and employment to machine learning algorithms whose operations we cannot explain? In an emergency, should automated vehicles sacrifice the passengers or the pedestrians? Should AI weapon systems decide who to target and how much risk to innocent life to accept? Are clinical decision software systems responsible for the diagnoses and treatments they suggest? If not, who is? Should robots be caregivers for the sick and the elderly? Does the value and meaning of human life change when robots do most of the work? Even more challenging issues arise if AI-systems ever approach consciousness and independent agency. Can AI-systems truly be conscious? Can they become ethical agents or the objects of ethical concern as members of our community and bearers of rights and interests that deserve protection? Is it permissible to aim to develop superintelligent AI-systems that could pose safety risks for humanity? Why or why not update humanity itself through living synergies with AI-systems? And what is the appropriate role for government policy in resolving and enforcing ethical decisions about AI? This class provides the philosophical grounding in ethical theory needed to address these immediate and future challenges to ethical governance of AI.