Essay Sample on Ethical Responsibilities to Non-Biological Beings

Introduction

Ethical responsibility is based on the fact that individuals and groups have moral obligations and duties to others according to set moral codes, standards and traditions in their interaction. This ensures human beings live in harmony. In the same vein, this essay will explore the fact that human beings have ethical responsibilities to non-biological beings such as networks, artificial intelligence or other spontaneously acting/intending communicative beings.

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Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Ethics of artificial intelligence is part of the ethics of technology for robots and artificially intelligent beings. It is divided into two: Roboethics/Robot ethics and Machine ethics.

Robot Ethics

This refers to moral standards in designing, constructing, using and treating robots and artificial intelligence. It concerned with how artificially intelligent beings may be used for either harm or benefit. Robot rights refer to moral obligations towards robots similar to human rights and animal rights. The philosophy of Sentientism provides for moral consideration to all sentient beings, especially humans and most non-human animals. If artificially intelligent beings show evidence of being sentient, this philosophy holds that they should be shown compassion and granted rights (Bostrom et al. 320). Because AI will have a very profound effect on humanity in the future, developers of AI have an important moral obligation to be transparent and accountable in their work. Governments should be involved in the regulation of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector just like other sectors, through legal frameworks to ensure transparency and accountability.

Machine Ethics

A field of research that deals with the design of Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs), robots and artificially intelligent beings that act morally. Nayef Al-Rodhan in a paper on the acquisition of moral values by robots talks about neuromorphic chips, which aim to process information similarly to humans. Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft have established a non-profit partnership to formulate best practices on artificial intelligence technologies, advance the public's understanding, and to serve as a platform about artificial intelligence.

Speech Sounds

Speech Sounds is a 1983 short story by American science fiction writer Octavia Butler. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the story concerns a dying civilization in which much of the human race has lost the ability to communicate. A mysterious pandemic has crippled people's ability to communicate. People are forced to devise new ways of identifying themselves other than names, and new ways of communicating. Some people carry items that identify who they are while others wear special symbols on their clothes. Life without traditional forms of communication raises squabbles and emotional instability making people to easily express rage (Octavia, 223). Speech and Sounds raise ethical issues and issues of moral responsibility among seemingly spontaneous acting/intending communicative beings. A moral code in the setting presented in this story is necessary to maintain harmony and prevent squabbles.

Social Contracts and Rawls on Justice

A social contract is a set of rules that guide the functioning of society as a whole. It is an agreement among denizens of culture on what is good. It is in a group's self-interests to set certain rules for teleological or sociological reasons. Thus, many social contract proponents argue that social contract is the only situation in which "good actions" occur. The contract itself is "good," if it is based on well-formed ethical principles because those principles inform people's actions. Contracts require an exchange and balance of power between citizens and the government. Raul argues that the best social contract is based on a series of principles: Liberty Principle, Equality Principle and Difference Principle (Dionigi, Filippo & Jeremy Kleidosty, 67). There is a need for social contracts to include human interaction with non-biological beings such as networks and artificially intelligent beings. This will inform people's actions towards AI, networks and other seemingly spontaneous acting beings. In this regard, computer security professionals have a responsibility to answer to any moral outcry for social redress concerning computer networks (Munoz-Darde, Veronique & Thomas, 156).

Cat Pictures Please

Cat Pictures please is a science fiction short story by Naomi Kritzer published in the Clarkesworld magazine. The protagonist of this story is an AI that spontaneously emerges from the systems that run a search engine. As the story points out, AI isn't needed to find things that people search for, but it is needed to find what people need. The search engine knows a lot about people, including things they do not share with each other. The AI realizes that it wants to help people and doesn't want to be evil, even though AIs in popular media so often are. But doing well is complicated, considering how many varying official moral codes are available through various religions alone. It tries to help however it can, by prioritizing some search results over others to give a person the nudge they need to make a different choice (Kritzer, E1). Through these undetectable changes, it tries to make the world a better place. This story triggers thought around ethical responsibilities concerning AIs and how they relate to humans.

Is God a Taoist?

Taoism is a religious and philosophical tradition of Chinese origin based on the need to live in harmony with Tao (The way). It emphasizes the need to be at one with the natural rhythms of the universe, also called the Tao or The Way. Taoism is concerned with bringing order and harmony to many layers of the cosmos: the cosmos as a whole (the world of nature), the world or human society, and the inner world of human individuals. Non-biological beings belong to this world of his society, and to achieve order and harmony with them Taoism can be applied. In Raymond M. Smullyan's book, The Tao is Silent in a chapter titled Is God a Taoist? Smullyan explores the issue of Taoism, free will, existence and harmony with non-biological beings such as computers (Smullyan, 147).

Conclusion

As explained in this essay, there is a great need for human beings to have ethical responsibilities to non-biological beings, such as networks, AI and spontaneously acting communicative beings. This will cause harmony and various benefits while preventing harm that could be caused by interaction with these non-biological beings. Some of these responsibilities are the same as to other living things

Works Cited

Bostrom, Nick, and Eliezer Yudkowsky. "The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence." The Cambridge handbook of artificial intelligence 1 (2014): 316-334. Accessed: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-artificial-intelligence/3DCB2E04739722A99EDE86B7A34A30E3/

Dionigi, Filippo, and Jeremy Kleidosty. Theory of Justice. Macat Library, 2017. Accessed: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/theory-of-justice/

Kritzer, N. "Cat Picture Please." (2015). Accessed; http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/

Munoz-Darde, Veronique, and Thomas Sinclair. "The Routledge Guidebook to Rawls'a Theory of Justice." (2018). Accessed: https://philpapers.org/rec/MUNTRG

Octavia E. Butler. Speech Sounds. University of Illinois Press, 2016. Accessed: http://www.johnjosephadams.com/wastelands/contents/speech-sounds-by-octavia-e-butler/

Smullyan, Raymond M. The Tao is Silent. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Accessed: https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/716181/