The ethics of AI – Fear

Some other fear is what we have as humans when we think about AI. are many around like, we might lose our jobs. We might have too much or too few leisure time. We might fear that we lose the conception of being unique. Humans are better than machines. Some say many humans want to rely on. People might lose their freedom and their rights. People might lose responsibilities or AI made systems might take over the world at some point. So when it comes to jobs? Indeed, many people will lose jobs, and that’s a fact. That’s not because of AI. That’s always was every technical advancement, people lose jobs. It’s more about how can the society react?

Typically, we see an evolvement of new jobs which appear, but other aspects, like a universal basic income are also discussed. And the most important aspect, especially with research here in Sweden, is that AI has to benefit everyone equally. And if that’s the case, it can actually hinder this diversity of different salary ranges and bring them maybe more together. About the leisure time many technologies have been feared that people lose leisure time, there were works in the 1900s stating that by 2000, we will only have four hours of work to do every day. All of these things don’t actually really happen. Sometimes we realize that putting a bit more work can finally define a company getting successful or not.

This concept of being unique, so humans back in the 1500s, they were quite sure that the human race is better than everything else designed by God to be special. And then Darwin found out in the theory that humans have been evolved by other species and are quite close to monkeys and so on and various other researchers supporting that. Even though they’re still now in the world, people don’t, trusting that typically being a well educated western world belief in all of these theories and now many proofs of that. So this concept of being so different from animals isn’t there anymore, and people have somehow survived that.

And if I ask nowadays already in the lectures, especially younger generations, they feel quite comfortable to be around with AI agents around which are as smart as humans as long as they’re not harmful, because that is an aspect we have to consider. About freedom and rights. Many other technologies are also helping to maybe lose freedom, and it’s not the technology itself, but what’s a human makes out of the technology. So there have to be good laws to prevent that from happening. Same with the responsibility, and that’s a quite interesting task, which you can do also later, try out the moral machine and the idea of that is you are sitting in a car and there’s an unavoidable accident.

And in a simple way, either you kill yourself or you kill the persons on the street, which decision what to do and then many other variants. What about when the person on the street is pregnant and you are maybe a 90 year old person? So various aspects here to think about what actually means being responsible? What is the right decision? And there is no clear definition, and there are different aspects to be considered and in different countries, different opinions.

And finally, the threat about AI might be taking over the world. Of course, that is a threat which is there. And many famous researchers have signed also letters warning that I could become taking over the world. But we are all aware of that, and we have to be careful that the AI doesn’t work into this direction and focus on our research on the week AIs.