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Ethics and AI

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Personhood in Science Fiction

Abstract

This chapter is the first of two chapters to explicitly consider artificial intelligence (AI). In this chapter I look at the ethical issues of AI, both in its creation and whether AI can possess a sense of ethics. The desire of cyborgs to live without suffering and the possession of self-awareness directly challenge the dehumanizing label of “artificial beings” and require a discussion of our relationship to the technology we create. Ethical frameworks that have been proposed in science fiction, such as Asimov’s Three Laws, will be analyzed.

Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species—back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire—has been ethically ambiguous.

—Carl Sagan, Demon Haunted World (1996, 373)

You know, when we fought the Cylons , we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we’ve done. Like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn’t our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.

—William Adama, Battlestar Galactica (miniseries, 2003)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although Williamson’s novel precedes Star Trek by a few decades, most people know the term “Prime Directive” from the Star Trek series, which is slightly different. In the series, it is the core tenet of Starfleet and prohibits members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations (e.g., by introducing them to advanced technologies or species if they have no prior knowledge of such things).

  2. 2.

    Very similar observations are made in The Butlerian Jihad (2002, the first in the Legends of Dune trilogy) where it is recounted that “the human race had gone stagnant, how people had become so dependent on machines that they had nothing left but apathy. Their goals were gone, their drive, their passion. When they should have had nothing to do but unleash their creative impulses, they were too lazy to perform even the work of the imagination” (109).

  3. 3.

    Man’s (human’s) necessity to work if often read into Genesis 2:15, notably the command in Eden to “work and keep it.” There are many, many other passages that laud hard work, however, from which these ideas are drawn. Some examples include Proverbs 12:24; Proverbs 14:23; Thessalonians 3:7–9; 1 Corinthians 15:58; and so forth.

  4. 4.

    See Carl Safina’s Beyond Words: what animals think and feel (2015) and Marc Bekoff’s The Emotional Lives of Animals (2010).

  5. 5.

    I argue for anthropomorphization as an asset in consideration of studies that have shown people who abuse animals are more likely to commit violent acts against humans—that is, generally show less empathy. For example, a study done by the Chicago Police Department in 2001–2004 showed that those charge with violent offenses often had prior charges of crimes against animals. Of those arrested for animal crimes, 65% had been arrested for violence against another person (Degenhardt 2005). Also see Arluke et al. (1999); Flynn (2011).

  6. 6.

    Reddit is an aggregation of social news, web content rating, and discussion website. Posts are organized by “subreddits” which can have user-created topics ranging from current events, popular culture, hobbies, music, and so forth. It has approximately 542 million visits per month as of February 2018.

  7. 7.

    There is a clever commentary here about how religious traditions follow the words of saints and prophets without thinking about the context or human aspect of such people (or, what may be missing from the picture—in this case, Augustine’s letters seem to have rounded out the personality to truer form). We may like our saints better on paper than in real life, should we have ever met them.

  8. 8.

    I will be using the gender neutral singular pronoun “they/them/their” for God, which reflects both contemporary trends towards gender neutral pronouns and the “we/our” language in Genesis.

  9. 9.

    The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the world’s largest technical professional organization with over 420,000 members across more than 160 countries.

  10. 10.

    Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine and author, has argued that “If humans were to create free-willed beings, absolutely every single aspect of traditional theology would be challenged and have to be reinterpreted in some capacity” (Merritt 2017). Kelly has recommended a “catechism for robots” be developed among Christian leaders and thinkers in the field, hoping to engage more theologians in serious conversation about this topic.

  11. 11.

    This was signed by more than 150 European leaders in politics, universities, and legal institutions. See “Open Letter” 2018.

  12. 12.

    In October 2017 the Saudi Arabia government very controversially gave “citizenship” to a robot named Sophia. Sophia is a fairly limited AI robot who was “interviewed” at the announcement of her citizenship and declared she was “very honored and proud for this unique distinction.” The event has been hailed as a bizarre publicity stunt, highlighting a number of problems (most obviously, Sophia was not wearing niqab, which—if she were really viewed as a Saudi woman—she would have been forced to wear). Devaluing the idea of “human rights” and the inequality between the sexes are of particular concern. As one article notes, “Sophia is nothing more than a slave elevated to celebrity” (Hart 2018). Also see Reynolds (2018), Stone (2017).

  13. 13.

    Once again, this may come down to the conversation of soul-having, which I will further explore in the next chapter.

  14. 14.

    The question as to whether the Three Laws really make robots safer has been problematized (including by Asimov who goes through a few of the issues with these laws in his stories). First of all, what would we consider “harm”? Does that include slapping? Dental work? BDSM? Are we defining harm by level of pain, or by suffering, and would that include mental harm? Another question that remains is whether or not we are supposed to consider the robots as “alive.” This is an open-ended question, as definitions vary even within the scientific world, and alive does not automatically include consciousness.

  15. 15.

    Of course, this is also a version of the famed Trolley Problem and is of particular concern for companies that are producing the “driverless cars.” A sort of artificial morality is required to make the kinds of calls one might make in a moving vehicle—does it swerve to miss the construction worker, even if it means hitting the minivan?

  16. 16.

    This is a play on the shahada in Islam, the first pillar and tenet of faith: There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet.

  17. 17.

    Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (fifteenth century) was a Christian Humanist and a scholar during the Renaissance. He advocated for reform within the Catholic church (as opposed to Luther who no longer recognized the authority of the Pope) promoting an idea of via media, or “middle road.” Considering his work on religious toleration and Ecumenism, the choice of the name Erasmus for this robot character is ironic.

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  1. Georgia College, Milledgeville, GA, USA

    Juli L. Gittinger

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Correspondence to Juli L. Gittinger .

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Gittinger, J.L. (2019). Ethics and AI. In: Personhood in Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30062-3_5

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