{"id":6137,"date":"2021-10-12T17:51:59","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T15:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethicstech.eu\/?p=6137"},"modified":"2022-12-08T14:25:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T13:25:44","slug":"bernd-c-stahl-human-flourishing-is-at-the-core-of-ai-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethicstech.eu\/en\/bernd-c-stahl-human-flourishing-is-at-the-core-of-ai-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernd C. Stahl: Human flourishing is at the core of AI ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Bernd C. Stahl:
Human flourishing
is at the core of AI ethics<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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12 October, 2021
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If the EU regulation becomes law as planned and gets a stronger requirement for dealing with high-risk AI through things like ethics by design then the adoption rate of this approach will go up because companies will have to comply with it, says Prof. Bernd C. Stahl in conversation with Maciej Chojnowski.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Maciej Chojnowski: In your recent book<\/a>, you delineate three main areas in today\u2019s complex AI ethical landscape: specific issues related to machine learning, social and political questions concerning living in a digital world, and metaphysical questions about the nature of humanity and status of machines. You also offer a classification of governance mechanism of AI ethics, which are: policy, organisational, and individual mechanisms.<\/strong> Should these issues be seen as separate or complementary?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Bernd C. Stahl*:\u00a0<\/strong>The discourse around ethics of AI is huge and through this categorisation I try to make it more manageable. But the classification of the ethical issues is not clear-cut. The distinction between the specific issues of machine learning and questions of living in the digital world are not really two separate things. The former have consequences for the latter. So I attempted to put some order on a chaos in a full awareness that this order is temporary and somehow idiosyncratic.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The reason for making this sort of classification is not just theoretical but also practical, isn\u2019t it?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Yes, it makes sense to think in these terms because it allows us to distinguish between similar types of issues and ways of addressing them. Take a look at bias and unfair discrimination. This is a huge societal relation that permeates all societies. But where machine learning comes in we already understand some of the mechanisms which can lead to unfair discrimination, and find ways of dealing with them.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But there are also societal issues that are not subject to technical interventions. Justice of distribution or changing nature of warfare are big issues where no individual agent not even a powerful nation state can solve the problem. These questions have to do with distribution within or between countries. Some of them will be subject to traditional policy interventions from taxation to liability law. Other call for international agreements.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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And then there are things I call metaphysical questions. These are sort of perpetual questions. AI triggers us to think about what is the nature of human in this world. I\u2019m not interested in a Terminator scenario but these fundamental questions play an important role in the way we think about technology and human beings integrity. They are important even though they might never be resolved.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Is it possible to create a matrix combining these two taxonomies: the problematic areas and specific governance mechanisms?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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To some extent yes, certainly for what I\u2019ve called the specific technical issues of machine learning. There are ways in which we can at least think about how responsibility should be attributed. The proposed regulation by the European Commission tries to do just that: to think about what the problems are, how they can be addressed and who should be responsible, like in the ex ante conformity assessment.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But for other problems it\u2019s much more difficult because they become a part of societal discourse or political negotiations. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a lot of agreement even within most European societies what exactly would constitute a just distribution of resources. And therefore we can\u2019t hope that we\u2019re going to find a simple solution to the question of extracting surplus value from personal data. These are more open and long going questions and there are lots of players who have a role in that. Governments, companies but also civil society, which can be hugely important in stimulating the debate.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Lately, we\u2019ve seen a lot of AI ethics guidelines being released by companies or international expert groups offering principles concerning AI ethics. But according to Brent Mittelstadt, one of the reasons why the prinicpled approach in AI ethics must cause problems is the lack of common aims among the AI practitioners. This is what distinguishes AI from medicine on whose codes of ethics the AI principles were based. Is human flourishing \u2013 seen as a purpose of AI, which is an idea you\u2019ve been writing about recently<\/a> \u2013 an attempt to solve the problem of those divergent aims within the AI community?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The reason for the application of principalism to AI is that the similar approach in biomedical ethics simply was the first one to establish itself as a significant political player. One of the advantages of this approach is that it exists and works to a certain extent. The disadvantage, especially with regard to emerging technologies, is that it was based \u2013 in its original context \u2013 on the common understanding that medical research is generally a good thing.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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That sort of consensus of course is not existing with regard to emerging technologies. It\u2019s not at all obvious that AI is gonna be the solution that society actually would like to put forward. Therefore there\u2019s a fundamental question whether we as a society want to support certain activities. And it\u2019s a question that prinicpalists\u2019 ethics approaches can\u2019t really deal with. So positing of human flourisihing is an attempt to respond to that. We recognize that some of technologies are more ethically beneficial while others are possibly ethically problematic or at least ethically agnostic.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The concept of human flourishing resonates with the recognition that human beings are at the core of this game. We don\u2019t build AI for the sake of building AI but because it\u2019s supposed to do something better for the world. But doing something better for the world is not just about maximizing profits or making sure that machine runs efficiently. It goes beyond that. It has a root in what human beings want to be, how they can live their lives, how they can achieve their aims. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve put this concept of human flourishing in the SHERPA project.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Looking at this concept from the operational point of view, do you think it can be used as a counterbalance to other general approaches to ethics like deontology or utilitarianism? Is there any practical advantage here over the other theories?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In terms of AI, it\u2019s easy to see how you could try to implement a utilitarian approach in AI. That\u2019s what a lot of the thought experiments around autonomous vehicles do, for example: do I kill this young child or these three old people? I think the concept of human flourishing could be a counterpoint to that. We chose it because it may help stimulate reflection at points where it\u2019s needed. But this is only one way of thinking.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A lot of ethics has the reference to the three big groups: the utilitarian, deontology and virtue ethical positions. I don\u2019t see them as contradictory but rather as different ways of looking at the same problem which may lead to different outcomes. But none of them individually has the right to say: this is the only solution we can go on with.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Do you perceive AI ethics as something to be used by engineers or deployers, or do you also find it applicable in the area of so called artifical moral agents? Some researchers, like Aimee van Wynsberghe or Scott Robbins, say we don\u2019t need artificial moral agents at all. What\u2019s your opinion on that?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I agree with it because I don\u2019t think any technology that we currently have is capable of showing any type of meaningful moral agency. You can tell a machine to do something but you can\u2019t tell it to reflect on why it did that and find justifications for that. And even if you could it probably still wouldn\u2019t correspond to what humans do when they do that.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The ethics of human beings has a lot to do with our nature: the fact that we are embodied beings, that we know we are living a finite life, that we will die, that we suffer and that we are among similar beings which share the same nature with us. So I think all of these aspects play into ethics from the human perspective.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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So unless we are capable of building machines that have similar characteristics to us, ethics in the machine would be something fundamentally different. And therefore I think the idea of machine moral agency doesn\u2019t really make a lot of sense. I do think it\u2019s an important question to ask what a machine should do in particular contexts like in the autonomous vehicle example. If a vehicle has a chance to make it safe, then these are worthy thoughts to think. But it\u2019s very far away from ethics that we understand as a human point of view.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Therefore I agree with all the people who say: machine ethics doesn\u2019t really exist and arguably it shouldn\u2019t exist. We shouldn\u2019t build anything that actually comes close to us because it will then muddy the waters as to what an ethical human agent is. However I don\u2019t think that in my actual lifetime I need to worry about this because machines are simply nowhere near that.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Speaking of autonomous vehicles, there\u2019s an interesting issue whether we should focus here on ethics alone, or rather get a broader perspective of political philosophy. The former might too much concentrate on individuals whereas the latter makes us think about the society as a whole. Do you think ethics of AI already covers political philosophy, or should we only include it in the AI ethical discourse?<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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As with many things, it depends on the definition. If you say ethics is around the individual, it wouldn\u2019t be an error. But one of the reasons why I like the concept of flourishing and have certain affinity to virtue ethics is that for the ancient philosophers like Aristotle this distinction between the individual and the political discourse wasn\u2019t really as relevant. And I think that\u2019s certainly true in the AI discourse as well. Concentrating exclusively on individuals is not going to do the job.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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