The Moral Risks of Risky Technologies

Abstract

We have ambivalent or mixed feelings towards technologies that have been designed to make our lives easier: towards computers, robots, avatars, Embodied Conversational Agents, and other kinds of emotion-oriented technologies (EOTs). These mixed feelings are manifested in particular in our emotional responses towards them, and in the other ways in which we interact with them. In particular, we often verbally and physically abuse them rather as if they were animate, shouting and swearing at them, kicking them, and so on. These emotional responses and patterns of behaviour are generally not of the kind that can be seen as rational; they are, rather, more visceral, more primitive. In this chapter, Peter Goldie considers various possible reasons why we ought not to treat technologies in these ways. In the end, he argues that that there is a kind of psychological slippery slope from the way we treat technologies to the way we treat people. Largely as a matter of habit, we move readily from treating technologies merely as means to treating people merely as means. Accordingly, we should cultivate our personality traits to make sure that we do not slide down this slippery slope, and, in order to do this, we should avoid abusing technologies.