What Do We Need to Understand About Ethics?

Abstract

Consideration of ethical questions in AI requires an understanding of some central questions and ideas in ethics. This chapter provides an introduction to ethics which will be used as a basis for further explanation of the particular questions about ethics in AI. Ethics is sometimes seen entirely negatively as restricting developments, but can also be used more positively as assisting in the promotion of beneficial activities. Standard normative ethical theories are outlined, but the focus here is on spelling out underlying questions in ethics. We need to understand that there are diverse accounts of the root need for ethics, questions about the nature of ethical concerns, and questions about who, or what, is the proper object of our moral concern, all of which need to be addressed in thinking about AI. There are also contentious questions about the nature of argument and justification in ethics, including questions about moral relativism , which are especially pertinent to the issue of developing codes of ethics, and which we will need to consider carefully. The issue of transparency in ethics parallels concerns with transparency in AI. Questions about the nature of moral agency and moral motivation are also of prime relevance to discussions of AI.