Bioethics and Environmental Ethics claim that bio-entities and ecosystems, or any form of life, are intrinsically worthy of life. Bring in Information Ethics, and this even includes that anything being or information is intrinsically worthy. This brought me to think about one of my favorite films, Ex Machina, and the display, or lack thereof, of ethical actions throughout the film.
 |
| Ava from Ex-Machina |
[SPOILER ALERT] The film is about a sentient AI named Ava who was created by Nathan. It is revealed that Nathan treats her extremely unethically, and she eventually outsmarts Nathan and Caleb, a coder who is testing her intelligence and falls in love with her. Ava eventually uses Caleb's love for her to escape the lab and enter the real world where she believes she belongs.
 |
| Jimmy and Sophia play Rock, Paper, Scissors. |
This idea of a fully sentient AI robot may seem far-fetched, but it could be around the corner. Hanson Robotics is working on Sophia, a humanoid robot built to mimic human behavior, and is an actual citizen of Saudi Arabia. Although this is a new field, the ethics surrounding any instance of being has been discussed since Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophers. Floridi explains how these philosophers set forth that simply being or any instance of information deserves to flourish in a way that is appropriate.
In the case of Ex Machina, I believe Ava was most definitely a sentient moral agent. She was an individual and human-based, or at least “reducible to an identifiable aggregation of human beings”. Less so with Sophia who even still is a moral agent, and even less so with my old Tamagotchi which was arguably being. But I don’t think it was unethical of me when my Tamagotchi died due to my disregard for mealtime. Or that I leave Alexa on my bookshelf all day, every day.
Although maybe far in the future, the creation of moral agents like Sophia brings up important ethical discussions and responsibilities that must be had. Ex Machina has warned us about the consequences if they are ignored.
Hey Serena,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post. The topic of Information Ethics in Artificial intelligence is certainly a complicated one. I really liked how you discussed the movie, Ex-Machina, to drive your main point home. Your post really makes the reader think about important questions relating to information ethics, such as: how should we treat our technology?
There are a few weak points to your article that I would suggest taking a look at. The first thing is that you only gave one brief connection from a class reading in your post. I would suggest that you make a few more connections; bringing in connections to the class readings earlier on in your article will help you make more connections. I would also suggest that you give a basic descriptor to who Floridi is. Outisde readers might not be familiar of their work, so it would be good to give a one to two sentence descriptor explaining who they are.
Overall, this is a solid post, just a few things to clean up. Thanks for sharing!