Abstract
The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is an upcoming field of research that deals with the ethical assessment of emerging AI applications and addresses the new kinds of moral questions that the advent of AI raises. The argument presented in this article is that, even though there exist different approaches and subfields within the ethics of AI, the field resembles a critical theory. Just like a critical theory, the ethics of AI aims to diagnose as well as change society and is fundamentally concerned with human emancipation and empowerment. This is shown through a power analysis that defines the most commonly addressed ethical principles and topics within the field of AI ethics as either to do with relational power or with dispositional power. Moreover, it is concluded that recognizing AI ethics as a critical theory and borrowing insights from the tradition of critical theory can help the field forward.
Highlights
The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging field within applied ethics and the philosophy of technology
Following Müller (2020), I understand the purpose of the field as twofold: AI ethics deals with the ethical issues that arise from AI systems as objects and with the moral questions raised by AI systems as subjects
By defining the ethical principles and moral questions that are central in AI ethics in terms of power, I have shown that the field is driven by a fundamental concern for human emancipation and empowerment
Summary
The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging field within applied ethics and the philosophy of technology. It has gained attention and urgency due to the rapid development of AI technology during the past decade. Following Müller (2020), I understand the purpose of the field as twofold: AI ethics deals with the ethical issues that arise from AI systems as objects and with the moral questions raised by AI systems as subjects.. Various approaches for the ethical analysis of AI systems as objects have been proposed, but the most dominant one appears to be the principled approach. Numerous initiatives have developed comparable sets of ethical principles and guidelines to ensure a desirable development and use of AI (Jobin et al, 2019; Ryan & Stahl, 2020).
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