On Freedom in the Artificial Age

Abstract

The currently ongoing introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and big data into our contemporary society causes a market transformation that heightens the need for ethics in the wake of an unprecedented outsourcing decision making to machines. Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses historically unique challenges for humankind. This chapter will address legal, economic and societal trends in the contemporary introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics and Big Data derived inferences. In a world, where there is a currently ongoing blend between human beings and AI, the emerging autonomy of AI holds unique potentials of eternal life but also imposes pressing legal and ethical challenges in light of AI gaining citizenship, overpopulation concerns and international development gaps. The current legal status of AI and robotics will be outlined with special attention to consumer protection and ethics in the healthcare sector. The unprecedented economic market revolution of outsourced decision making to AI will be captured in macroeconomic trends outlining AI as corruption free market solution, which is yet only prevalent and efficient in some parts of the world. Finally, a future-oriented perspective on the use of AI for enhancing democracy and diplomacy will be granted but also ethical boundaries envisioned. The mentioned transition appears to hold novel and unprecedentedly-described freedom challenges in our contemporary world. In an homage to freedom, the following paper first lays open these freedom-threatened areas in order to then provide strategies to alleviate these potential freedom deficiencies but also set new freedom potential free.