Articles
Robots & Artificial Intelligence - Ethical & Moral Issues
Dt: 22/8/23
Robots & Artificial Intelligence -
Ethical & Moral Issues
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
Science without spirituality is blind;
Spirituality without science is lame
-Albert Einstein
Astounding advances are being made in the general realm of computers, robots, machine learning and artificial intelligence. The consequences for human societies will be severe and serious. Already machine translation of languages and robots performing many human tasks including judgments on the basis of information fed are raising serious questions as to whether the robots will exceed humans in intelligence. Stephen William Hawking, the great English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author (bn: 8 January 1942, d: 14 March 2018) predicted a singularity by the Y 2100. That singularity is characterized by the intelligence of robots, exceeding that of humans.
2. IBM’s computer, Watson is sitting on the Doctor’s board in the Manipal Hospital to deliberate upon the course of treatment, including surgery for cancer. It is established that the course of treatment Watson is prescribing for cancer cure is agreeing with that of the most versatile team of doctors. IBM’s chess playing Robot, Deep Blue defeated the world’s reigning world champion Grand Master Kasparov in May 1997. While the artificial intelligence implanted into robots can substitute the best humans to arrive at decisions and predictions on the basis of oceans of data, mined and fed into them , the question arises as to whether they can exercise moral and ethical decisions like good and bad; love and hate; right and wrong; which are all emotions that are shaped by values familiarized and taught by tradition, religion social and political ideologies, spirituality, and dharma (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism).
3. Computers will give decisions and judgments based upon the information fed into them. In the realm of non-science that is, spirituality different religions have different values and use for and of humanity . For eg: Some religion believe as asserted by their Prophets that other religions are either false or inadequate and those people must be converted by all possible means to the only true religion as per the command of the God of that only true religion. In normal parlance, this is called intolerance and exclusion. Some non-Abrahamic faith and tradition systems believe in rebirth into different forms of life depending upon virtuous and sinful actions done in the present birth. One Abrahamic religion says, “I am a jealous God; thou shall not worship other gods”. Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) hold that men can use natural resources, even ravish them for personal well -being and enjoyment, no matter in the process life on earth is imperiled.
4. The non-Abrahamic religions, dharma (Hinduism, Buddhism) and indigenous nature worshipping faiths hold that humans are part of nature and therefore they should co-exist with all creation, mutually nurturing and supporting and so causing least damage to nature and natural order.
5. If the robots are to be instructed to take decisions and enforce them, what set of morals and ethics and ideas of spirituality, god and man, sin and virtue, right and wrong should be “taught” to them. People talk of Christian culture Christian values; Islamic culture and Islamic values (in fact, while there is the UNO’s (United Nations Organization) Universal Declaration of Human Rights subscribed to by Member nations of the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has came out with Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, there -by asserting that Islam’s view of human rights and of human beings is different from the rest) . There is now a widespread concern for and debate regarding which ethics, which morals, which ideas of spirituality and god should be imparted to robots imbued with artificial intelligence.
6. Humans are communicating with one another globally . They are broadcasting and propagating their views on any issue that concerns men and matter on this planet. Solutions to problems that are advocated are tinged by the beliefs, customs, ideologies and culture and religion of the propagator/communicators. Will the robots also do this ? In international conferences nations are working for a consensus. Will the AI- imbued robots inter- communicate and debate and come to consensus ? If robots become superior to humans in intelligence then seeing that humans are at times and in places engaged in destructive warfare will groups of robots wage wars to prevail over what they think are adversaries. Thoughts like these are indeed disturbing men’s minds - minds of benevolent scientists, engineers, philosophers. The singularity predicted for the year 2100 should disturb men’s minds. Before calamitous developments take place, there should be an agreement on what ethics and morality should the robots be taught.
7. Alarmed by the release of GPT-4 by the San Francesco (USA -based) company Open AI thousands of scientists, technologists and sociologists and intellectuals from across the world signed an appeal in March 2023 circulated by Future of Life Institute to halt giant Artificial Intelligence experiments.
8. The European Union has already begun an exercise to reign developments in AI so that they don’t prove destructive. GPT-4 is producing papers, speeches, opinion , advisories at the wish of it users reflecting /containing their views . Now authors are adding cautionary note, “ this paper is not by using GPT-4” .
9. President Biden of the USA has in the first week of April 2923 warned technology firms on the dangers of AI . The emergence of easy to use AI tools can generate manipulative content and realistic looking synthetic media known as deep fakes . He also called for an intense debate to halt further experiments in AI till the moral and ethical questions are resolved and a worldwide regulatory body is established. This is like nuclear scientists cautioning against development of more devastating nuclear weapons and the world’s leading countries agreeing to a Test Ban Treaty ( a rogue state North Korea in utter disregard of world opinion is developing deadly nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them ). (974 words)
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