Escaping the Western Cosm-Ethical Hegemony: The Importance of Cultural Diversity in the Ethical Assessment of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The world of Artificial intelligence (AI) is struggling to set standards that would be globally applied. In this struggle, ethics is extensively summoned to regulate the development and use of AI systems, but also to promote vested interests. The potential benefits associated with AI are such that many actors, public and private, have entered a race for AI dominance led by the United States and China. In this context some actors, such as the European Union, are slowly taking over AI regulation and setting the limits regarding what is ethically acceptable and what is not. Aware of the power of norms, the West has slowly spread its normative influence all around the world, releasing hundreds of documents pertaining to ethical principles, and denying the reality of a world made of a diversity of ethical stances. To impose its own views on ethics applied to AI, the West has developed an ethical narrative transforming ethics into cosm-ethics, that is mere make up through communication. This paper aims at opening a debate on the reality of ethics applied to AI. It contextualizes the subject in a wider setting of race for AI dominance, stressing the Western ethical hegemony over AI established through a pseudo ethical narrative. To illustrate these points, it focuses on the case of the European Union, to eventually stress the urgent need for cultural pluralism in the field of ethics applied to AI.