by Luciano Floridi
Aeon
Originally posted May 9, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
We should make AI environment-friendly. We need the smartest technologies we can build to tackle the concrete evils oppressing humanity and our planet, from environmental disasters to financial crises, from crime, terrorism and war, to famine, poverty, ignorance, inequality and appalling living standards.
We should make AI human-friendly. It should be used to treat people always as ends, never as mere means, to paraphrase Immanuel Kant.
We should make AI’s stupidity work for human intelligence. Millions of jobs will be disrupted, eliminated and created; the benefits of this should be shared by all, and the costs borne by society.
We should make AI’s predictive power work for freedom and autonomy. Marketing products, influencing behaviours, nudging people or fighting crime and terrorism should never undermine human dignity.
And finally, we should make AI make us more human. The serious risk is that we might misuse our smart technologies, to the detriment of most of humanity and the whole planet. Winston Churchill said that ‘we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us’. This applies to the infosphere and its smart technologies as well.
The article is here.
