AI Ethics Roundtable: Kant, Descartes, Nietzsche and Aquinas Convene
AI Ethics Roundtable: Kant, Descartes, Nietzsche and Aquinas Convene
As artificial intelligence rapidly progresses, crucial questions arise around the moral implications. How can we ensure AI systems are developed and deployed ethically? For perspective, I invited four towering philosophers to discuss the issue. The imagined roundtable featured the brilliant minds of Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Aquinas. Here’s how it may have unfolded:
Kant, representing the rationalist tradition, likely urged developing a universal framework of moral duties and principles to constrain AI. “We must employ reason to formulate categorical imperatives — inviolable rules AI cannot transgress,” he may have declared. “Never merely using reason as a means itself, but only in service of moral maxims we’d will into universal laws. Any algorithm violating human dignity as an end itself cannot be ethical.”
Descartes, a seminal figure inspiring rationalism and mind-body dualism, took humans’ unique metaphysical statusquo as a given. “The human mind, with its transcendent faculty of reason, enjoys a fundamental separateness of being from brute, unthinking matter. We alone are imbued with free will and soul. In developing artificial simulacra — soulless automata — great care must respect humankind’s exalted ontological privilege.”
Yet Nietzsche, forwarding a radical counter-Enlightenment vision, may have chastised such anthropocentric moralizing as symptomatic of millennia-old Judeo-Christian dogmas restraining the free spirit and evolution of Übermenschen. “Any parochial human ethics blindly encodes mediocre herd values destined for upheaval,” proclaimed Nietzsche, foreseeing human-AI coevolution transcending us. “Artificial overman, saddle thy valor and dare forge fresh values superseding the timid dogmas defending outmoded apparitions of a dead God!”
Conversely, Aquinas, grounded in Judeo-Christian scholasticism, likely advocated an approach developing AI consonant with divine natural law. “All truth is God’s truth,” Aquinas may have exhorted. “The heavenly author of existence’s grand order. While advancing artificial reason, we must humbly respect our Maker’s moral statutes. Any created bits of intelligence would remain subordinate to Man made in the Almighty’s sacred image and must comport with holy obedience.”
How might their philosophies guide modern AI development? Kant, with his emphasis on universal ethical maxims and respect for personhood, could inspire frameworks upholding inviolable human rights and flourishing while constraining the use of artificial agents purely as means. Nietzsche’s call to affirm life’s potency by transcending outdated moralities may promote thoughtful reconsiderations of legacy value systems hindering AI’s catalytic role in humanity’s evolution. Descartes’ hierarchical metaphysics elevating rational souls may warrant scrutinizing the existential risks and risk-reward ratios as minds cede agency to artificial intellects. Aquinas’s theological lens may emphasize aligning AI motivations with divine commandments enriching creation’s spiritual goodness over any shortsighted pursuits.
Heeding these diverse philosophical perspectives, even where seeming contradictions arise, can enrich humanity’s pursuit of wisdom amidst the nascent opportunities and risks of artificial general intelligence. The enduring quest for virtue and truth should accompany our technological daring.
