AI Ethics: A Deflationary yet Cautionary View

Recent advances in AI research and development are raising a host of difficult ethical questions related to the impacts of AI technologies on human life. Although the project of building “moral machines” is not new, AI Ethics is now a vibrant field of research and public policy. One could hardly be blamed for being bewildered by the state of the public discussion on AI. I will defend what I call a deflationary view about the future development of AI and the moral status of advanced AI systems. My view is nonetheless cautionary because the narrow and limited machine learning algorithms that we currently have are already wreaking havoc in some crucial spheres of human life and disrupting established social practices; think, for instance, of generative AI such as ChatGPT. I will try to show that AI ethics, done properly, has the conceptual resources to help us move beyond the lofty realm of principles and to contribute to the judicious regulation of AI technologies.