Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

S. Matthew Liao

Represents state-of-the-art thinking in this fast-growing field.
Highlights central themes of Artificial Intelligence and morality such as how to build ethics into AI, how to address mass unemployment due to widespread automation, how to avoid designing AI systems that perpetuate existing biases, and how to determine whether an AI is conscious.
Includes chapters by well-established figures in philosophy and interesting contributors from within the field.

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

S. Matthew Liao

Description

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies rapidly progress, questions about the ethics of AI, in both the near-future and the long-term, become more pressing than ever. This volume features seventeen original essays by prominent AI scientists and philosophers and represents the state-of-the-art thinking in this fast-growing field.

Organized into four sections, this volume explores the issues surrounding how to build ethics into machines; ethical issues in specific technologies, including self-driving cars, autonomous weapon systems, surveillance algorithms, and sex robots; the long term risks of superintelligence; and whether AI systems can be conscious or have rights.

Though the use and practical applications of AI are growing exponentially, discussion of its ethical implications is still in its infancy. This volume provides an invaluable resource for thinking through the ethical issues surrounding AI today and for shaping the study and development of AI in the coming years.

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

S. Matthew Liao

Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
A Short Introduction to the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, S. Matthew Liao
Part I: Building Ethics Into Machines
1. Machine Morality: Building or Learning, Peter Railton
2. The Use and Abuse of the Trolley Problem: Self Driving Cars, Innocent Threats, and the Distribution of Harm, F.M. Kamm
3. The Moral Psychology of AI and the Ethical Opt-Out Problem, Jean-François Bonnefon, Azim Shariff, and Iyad Rahwan
4. Modeling and Reasoning with Preferences and Ethical Priorities in AI Systems, Andrea Loreggia, Nicholas Mattei, Francesca Rossi, and K. Brent Venable
5. Computational Law, Symbolic Discourse, and the AI Constitution, Stephen Wolfram
Part II: The Near Future of Artificial Intelligence
6. Planning for Mass Unemployment: Precautionary Basic Income, Aaron James
7. Autonomous Weapons and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Peter Asaro
8. Near Term Artificial Intelligence and the Ethical Matrix, Cathy O'Neil and Hanna Gunn
9. The Ethics of Artificial Sexuality, Kate Devlin
Part III: Long-Term Impact of Superintelligence
10. Public Policy and Superintelligent AI: A Vector Field Approach, Nick Bostrom, Allan Dafoe, and Carrick Flynn
11. Artificial Intelligence: A Binary Approach, Stuart Russell
12. Alignment for Advanced Machine Learning Systems, Jessica Taylor, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Patrick LaVictoire, and Andrew Critch
13. Moral Machines: From Value Alignment to Embodied Virtue, Wendell Wallach and Shannon Vallor
14. Machine Learning Values, Steve Petersen
Part IV: Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, and Moral Status
15. How to Catch an AI Zombie: Testing for Consciousness in Machines, Susan Schneider
16. Designing AI with Rights, Consciousness, Self-Respect, and Freedom, Eric Schwitzgebel, with Mara Garza
17. The Moral Status and Rights of Artificial Intelligence, S. Matthew Liao
Index

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

S. Matthew Liao

Author Information

S. Matthew Liao, Arthur Zitrin Chair of Bioethics, Director of the Center for Bioethics, Professor of Global Public Health, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy, New York University

S. Matthew Liao is Arthur Zitrin Chair of Bioethics, Director of the Center for Bioethics, Professor of Global Public Health, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of The Right to Be Loved (Oxford University Press 2015) and editor of Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality (Oxford University Press 2016); and the co-editor of The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2015) and Current Controversies in Bioethics (Routledge). He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy, a peer-reviewed international journal of moral, political and legal philosophy.

Contributors:

Peter Asaro, The New School
JF Bonnefon, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Nick Bostrom, Oxford
Andrew Critch, UC Berkeley
Allan Dafoe, Oxford
Kate Devlin, King's College London
Carrick Flynn, Oxford
Mara Garza, UC Riverside
Hanna Gunn, UC Merced
Aaron James, UC Irvine
Frances Kamm, Rutgers
Patrick LaVictoire, Lyft
S. Matthew Liao, NYU
Andrea Loreggia, Padova
Nicholas Mattei, Tulane
Cathy O'Neil, O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing
Steve Petersen, Niagara
Iyad Rahwan, MIT
Peter Railton, Michigan
Francesca Rossi, IBM
Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley
Susan Schneider, University of Connecticut
Eric Schwitzgebel, UC Riverside
Azim Shariff, Univeristy of British Columbia
Jessica Taylor, Median Group
Shannon Vallor, Santa Clara
K. Brent Venable, Tulane
Wendell Wallach, Yale
Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram Research
Eliezer Yudkowsky, Machine Intelligence Research Institute

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

S. Matthew Liao

Reviews and Awards

"This landmark collection offers a first-rate introduction to the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence. Wide-ranging, accessible, and authoritative, it will be an essential guide to some of the most important issues of our time." - Huw Price, University of Cambridge

"In a world that too often asks 'Can we?' without asking 'Should we?', this exciting collection confronts us with some of the best new thinking on the ethics of AI. From the moral status of machine learning systems to algorithmic bias, it is bound to shape future discussions of this most important topic." - Michael Patrick Lynch, University of Connecticut

"This volume is ideal for anyone who wants a comprehensive introduction to the ethical issues surrounding the design and use of AI technologies. Dr. S. Matthew Liao provides an outstanding collaborative exchange between AI researchers and philosophers. I have no doubt that it will become required reading in courses on AI and ethics." - Tina Eliassi-Rad, Northeastern University