Paul Dumouchel writes on AI challenges

In his first contribution, the professor of philosophy at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences at the Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto, Japan) questions the very nature of intelligence :

Abstract The  idea  of  artificial  intelligence  implies  the  existence  of  a  form  of intelligence that is “natural,” or at least not artificial. The problem is that intel-ligence,  whether  “natural”  or  “artificial,”  is  not  well  defined:  it  is  hard  to  say what,  exactly,  is  or  constitutes  intelligence.  This  difficulty  makes  it  impossible to measure human intelligence against artificial intelligence on a unique scale. It does not, however, prevent us from comparing them; rather, it changes the sense and meaning of such comparisons. Comparing artificial intelligence with human intelligence could allow us to understand both forms better. This paper thus aims to compare and distinguish these two forms of intelligence, focusing on three issues: forms of embodiment, autonomy and judgment. Doing so, I argue, should enable us to have a better view of the promises and limitations of present-day artificial intelligence, along with its benefits and dangers and the place we should make for it in our culture and society

Paul Dumouchel, « Intelligence, Artificial and Otherwise », (2019) 2 Forum Philosophicum 241.

He follows to deconstruct the myth of the moral machine :

A recent large-scale survey, “The Moral Machine experiment” (2018) aggregated 39.61 million decisions across 233 countries and territories reflecting people’s preferences as to who should be spared in fatal moral dilemmas involving autonomous road vehicles. The experiment collected ‘big data’ to reach conclusions concerning the moral rules that should be implemented in these vehicles. In this paper, first I question the philosophical presuppositions of the experiment, arguing that it has very little to do with ethics or moral norms, but essentially constitutes a market survey concerning the social acceptance of a dangerous technology. Then, I criticize the myth of moral machines and the illusion that abandoning to automated systems the power to ‘autonomously’ take lethal ‘decisions’ is a radically new phenomenon. Finally, I suggest a different solution to the difficulties addressed by the Moral Machine experiment and make political and legal suggestions concerning policy towards ‘autonomous road vehicles’.

Paul Dumouchel, « Philosophy and the Politics of Moral Machines », (2019) 4 Journal of Artificial Intelligence Humanities 31.

This content has been updated on 5 February 2020 at 15 h 38 min.