Abstract
The term “Second Machine Age” was used by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book of the same name as an indication of the impact of AI technology on people, society, and the economy. The term seeks to analyse the age we actually live in, its hidden patterns, which jobs and fields of study have a perspective, and which do not. It is about the second industrial revolution that is going on right now, and it changes the world no less radically than the first one, driven by the steam locomotive. Exponential growth of digital technologies, digitization of everything and recombinant innovation is a driving engine and fuel of the Second Machine Age. However, the ethical issues of this change remain unaddressed. Artificial intelligence is currently being dealt with by a great many scientists and philosophers who ask many questions. The most important questions are whether the machines can think, whether we will give them the copyright, which the animals do not have until now, and the question whether AI can has its own ethics. The study focuses on these issues, and uses concrete examples to show our unpreparedness for these topics.
Similar content being viewed by others
Further Reading
Anderson, M., & Anderson, S. 2011. Machine Ethics. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Asimov, I. 2008. I, Robot, Spectra Books: Reprint edition.
Boddington, P. 2017. Towards a Code of Ethics for Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence: Foundations, Theory, and Algorithms) (1st ed.). Springer.
Bonnefon, J., Shariff, A., & Rahwan, I. 2015. Autonomous vehicles need experimental ethics: Are we ready for utilitarian cars? Science, 352(6293), 1573–1576. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf2654.
Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. 2016. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (1st ed.). New York:W. W. Norton & Company.
Carter, M. 2007. Minds and Computers: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (1st ed.). Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press.
Dreyfus, H. 1992. What Computers Still Can’t Do. New York: MIT Press.
Erbas, M. D., Bull, L. & Winfield, A. F. 2015. On the evolution of behaviors through embodied imitation. Artificial Life, 21(2). https://doi.org/10.1162/ARTL_a_00164.
Finn, E. 2017. What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing. MIT Press.
Kurzweil, R. 2005. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Viking.
Li, D., & Du, Y. 2007. Artificial Intelligence with Uncertainty. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Lin, P., Abney, K., & Bekey, G. 2012. Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Minsky, M. 1988. Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Oliveira, A. 2017. The Digital Mind: How Science is Redefining Humanity. MIT Press.
Penrose, R. 1996. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wallach, W. A. 2009. Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Warwick, K. 2011. Artificial Intelligence: The Basics (1st ed.). London:Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hauer, T. Society and the Second Age of Machines: Algorithms Versus Ethics. Soc 55, 100–106 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-018-0221-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-018-0221-6