AI and Ethics:

This is a point of major concern in the development and deployment of AI, as ethics, meaning the upholding, defense and promotion of quality of life, equity, justice and opportunity for human beings, has not been prioritized in the design or motive of AI systems, which instead prioritize efficiency, productivity, and profit. 

AI systems are trained on existing content: this means that they absorb the biases, opinions, cruelties, injustices and misinformation that permeates culture, and because they lack ethical, emotional or social intelligence they do not discern or distinguish these characteristics. 

This is extremely dangerous as the material that the AI produces will not only reiterate these existing biases and errors, but will exacerbate them by increasing the biased, erroneous and cruel content in the world. 

A Key Ethical Question: 

“We must ask: Who is developing this technology, for whom and for what, and with what data? Who profits from this technology? And then as a corollary: Who holds sovereignty and ownership rights to the data, and what is at stake, and for whom, in the resulting applications?” – Theodora Dryer

AI has the fearsome potential to entrench social and cultural injustices and conditions, increase economic, education, and social inequality, among many other things.

If it is not extremely regulated, AI will enrich the rich and render the conditions and economic status of the average and disadvantaged more precarious, and more impoverished. 

UNESCO Recommendations on the

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: 

Core Values of AI Regulation:

human rights and human dignity,

living in peaceful,

just and interconnected societies,

ensuring diversity and inclusiveness,

anvironmental and ecosystem flourishing

Primary Ethical Issues in AI:

◇ Unemployment

◇ Inequality: AI has the high potential to increase wealth, educational, environmental and social inequities.

◇ Humanity: AI will affect our behavior, relationships, socialization, and interaction with one another.

◇ Artificial Stupidity: the systems have distinct cognitive limitations which will be dangerous is over-empowered. 

◇ Racism: AI is designed to reconstitute existing content thus resulting in a high volume of biased content.

◇ Security

◇ Unpredictable Outcomes and Autonomy

◇ Singularity: the potential for AI to have advantage and control over humans.

◇ AI Rights: what kinds of protections and treatment does AI need/warrant?

AI and the Exacerbation of the Loneliness Epidemic: 

AI and other modern technologies thrive on human attention, and what this means is that they are designed to maximize our continued engagement with the technological interface, at any cost. 

The costs are manifold but perhaps the greatest is that of connection, direct, meaningful and casual interpersonal contact has been and continues to be minimized through automation of social life, communication and business and commercial operations, and has created a major epidemic of loneliness and isolation which is so pronounced that it is contributing to decreasing life expectancy in the United States. 

◇ AI can provide uncanny replication of human responses but does not in fact feel, emote or have personal depth, but people suffering from acute loneliness are turning to Chat AI for comfort and connection for lack of more accessible options. 

This poses significant risks by perpetuating human isolation, alienation and disconnect, and entrapping those who are emotionally vulnerable. 

Adaptation and Preparation for AI: 

When it comes down to it, the best way to take on the advent of AI is to accept that it is coming and develop the skills and mindset necessary to adapt and strategize for these changes, to get educated, and develop the skills you need to instrumentalize this technology in order not to be subsumed by it.

Having a ‘digital mindset’ will be imperative to riding rather than submerging in the wave of AI.

Be active in calling for conversation, regulation and interrogoation of AI and how it is integrated into our lives.