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Artificial Intelligence

The Shylock Syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

DAVID R. LAWRENCE ,
CÉSAR PALACIOS-GONZÁLEZ  and
JOHN HARRIS
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Abstract:

It seems natural to think that the same prudential and ethical reasons for mutual respect and tolerance that one has vis-à-vis other human persons would hold toward newly encountered paradigmatic but nonhuman biological persons. One also tends to think that they would have similar reasons for treating we humans as creatures that count morally in our own right. This line of thought transcends biological boundaries—namely, with regard to artificially (super)intelligent persons—but is this a safe assumption? The issue concerns ultimate moral significance: the significance possessed by human persons, persons from other planets, and hypothetical nonorganic persons in the form of artificial intelligence (AI). This article investigates why our possible relations to AI persons could be more complicated than they first might appear, given that they might possess a radically different nature to us, to the point that civilized or peaceful coexistence in a determinate geographical space could be impossible to achieve.

Keywords

artificial intelligencehumanitymotivationsurvivalmoral significancepersonhoodnature
Type
Special Section: Responsibility, Vulnerability, Dignity, and Humanity
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 250 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

Notes

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42. Here we continue to talk of course of what might be termed “ultimate moral significance”—that is, the significance possessed by human persons, persons from other planets, and nonorganic persons in the form of AI if and when they appear.