The ethics of artificial intelligence
most general, most abstract asking of the top- down question: how is knowledge possible?’ Elsewhere he says his view is that AI should be viewed ‘ as amost abstract inquiry into the possibility of intelligence or knowledge ’ . In essence, Dennett claims that AI is an effort to explain intelligence. Not, however, by studying brain activity in the hope of identifying certain aspects to which cognition can be reduced. Rather, he claims that, by implementing abstract algorithms that capture cognition, we are developing and furthering our own understanding of the human mind. Without doubt his views have been criticized. For example, one could counter his claim by saying that AI, by virtue of not being human, restricts itself to mechanistic solutions, and hence its domain is not the Kantian domain of all possible modes of intelligence, but just all possible mechanistically realizable modes of intelligence. However, despite the critique from multiple different philosophers, Dennett refuses to let his view be tossed aside. In 1971 he stated: ‘Bu t . . . the mechanism requirement of AI is not an additional constraint of any moment, for if psychology is possible at all, a nd if Church’s thesis is true, the constraint of mechanism is nomore severe than the constraint against begging the question in psychology, and who would wish to evade that?’ This is perhaps not the most convincing argument. However, without a shadow of a doubt, the best argument in the philosophy of AI is John Searle’s ‘Chinese room argument’ (CRA). This thought experiment was designed to overthrow ‘strong’ AI. The CRA is based on a thought-experiment in which Searle himself stars. He is inside a room; outside the room are native Chinese speakers who don’t know that Searle is inside it. Searle -in-the-box, like Searle- in-real- life, doesn’t know any Chinese, but is fluent in English. The Chinese speakers send cards into the room through a slot; o n these cards are written questions in Chinese. The box, courtesy of Searle’s secret work therein, returns cards to the native Chinese speakers as output. Searle’s output is produced by consulting a rulebook: this book is a lookup table that tells him what Chinese to produce based on what is sent in. To Searle, the Chinese is all just a bunch of (to use Searle’s language) squiggle -squoggles. But he can still, because of the rule-book, give the right answers, but without any understanding. The Chinese Room Argument is incidentally also a refutation of the Turing Test and other forms of logical behaviourism. I, in the Chinese Room, behave exactly as if I understood Chinese, but I do not. One can see this point by contrasting the Chinese case with the case of a man answering questions in English. Suppose I, in the same room, am also given questions in English and I pass out answers to the questions in English just as I pass out answers to the questions in Chinese. From the point of view of the outside observer, my behaviour in answering the questions in Chinese is just as good as my behaviour in answering questions in English. I pass the Turing Test for both. But frommy point of view, there is a huge difference. What exactly is the difference? The difference can be stated in common sense terms. In the case of English, I understand both the questions and the answers. In the case of Chinese, I understand neither. In Chinese I am just a computer. This shows that the Turing Test, or any other purely behavioural test, is insufficient to distinguish genuine cognition from behaviour which successfully imitates or simulates cognition.
In conclusion, over the years the ethics of artificial intelligence has been enthusiastically discussed and debated. With the up-and- coming increase in ‘smart’ technology , we could be seeing a large amount of modern day philosophy being based around the ethics and principles of artificial intelligence.
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