Abstract
Imagine you are casually browsing an online bookstore, looking for an interesting novel. Suppose the store predicts you will want to buy a particular novel: the one most chosen by people of your same age, gender, location, and occupational status. The store recommends the book, it appeals to you, and so you choose it. Central to this scenario is an automated prediction of what you desire. This article raises moral concerns about such predictions. More generally, this article examines the ethics of artificial social cognition—the ethical dimensions of attribution of mental states to humans by artificial systems. The focus is presumptuous aim attributions, which are defined here as aim attributions based crucially on the premise that the person in question will have aims like superficially similar people. Several everyday examples demonstrate that this sort of presumptuousness is already a familiar moral concern. The scope of this moral concern is extended by new technologies. In particular, recommender systems based on collaborative filtering are now commonly used to automatically recommend products and information to humans. Examination of these systems demonstrates that they naturally attribute aims presumptuously. This article presents two reservations about the widespread adoption of such systems. First, the severity of our antecedent moral concern about presumptuousness increases when aim attribution processes are automated and accelerated. Second, a foreseeable consequence of reliance on these systems is an unwarranted inducement of interpersonal conformity.
Highlights
Recognizing a moral dimension of aim attributionOur lives unfold and take shape as our general aims evolve to become more specific. How, and in response to what pressures, this evolution occurs sometimes matters to us
How our aims sharpen, how they evolve from general to more specific, can be morally significant
This article gives an account of presumptuousness, situating it in relation to the themes of individuality and conformity, and demonstrates the applicability of this evaluative concept to a class of increasingly common automated systems
Summary
Our lives unfold and take shape as our general aims evolve to become more specific. How, and in response to what pressures, this evolution occurs sometimes matters to us. Wondering which position Celina would want, they consider a few factors For one thing, they know Celina thrives with exposure to new things (like she might encounter at events where she would sell merchandise). She might be able to deal well enough with the insufferable philosophers He feels sure that this cheerful, attractive young woman will enjoy the attention from attendees of university events. He concludes that Celina would want the sales position. If it were increasingly common for our aims to take shape as in the third scenario, we should worry about this ipso facto loss of individual agency and the diminished authorship of our own lives. We must look more carefully at the specificity of our aims, the accuracy of aim attributions, and the kinds of evidence on which such attributions may be grounded
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