ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ETHICS: A DIALOGUE WITH LIMA VAZ

Abstract

The technological achievements from the beginning of the century have led humanity to mythify the processes of high functional performance of machines, to the point of considering computer programs as intelligent entities, which have wide application in all sectors of society as the execution of activities previously reserved exclusively for humans, which they perform infinitely faster, more precise and more efficient than humans. Computer Science, associated with Robotics, has obtained amazing results in design of embodied machines very similar to humans (androids and ginoids), destined to perform with affectively with humans. Among these achievements, the one that draws special attention is the possible creation of machines morally more elaborate than humans themselves. This ambition touches directly the statutes of philosophical Ethics, since its original Socratic foundation as a science of ethos. Among the philosophers most dedicated to reflecting on the ethical dilemmas of the 20th century, we find Henrique Cláudio de Lima Vaz, a Brazilian philosopher of rare intellectual stature and enviable academic production. Lima Vaz devoted his reflections to several themes of our time, and his thought continues to inspire current reflections on issues of this century. One of these questions is the relationship presented here between the achievements of Artificial Intelligence and what he calls civilizational mutation, a new radical change in the civilizational flow of human experiences. This article departs, therefore, from the Lima Vaz’s thought to present some ethical questions about the unexpected experiences lived today in the horizon of a technicized culture, which subject the human to the empire of a supposed machinic superiority, which ends up impacting our symbolic universe, putting under suspicion some untouchable attributes of the spiritual essence that constitutes us, such as the notion of consciousness, openness to transcendence irreducible to the most eloquent achievements of any technical evolution.