The AI and robot entity

Abstract

Robots are instruments of the human being who is intelligent and free. Aristotle defines being free as the one that is cause of himself or exists on his own and for himself (causa sui or causa sui ipsius). By contrast, the instrument is not a cause of itself and does not work by the power of its entity, but only by the motion imparted by the principal agent, so that the effect is not likened to the instrument but to the principal agent. From the Christian perspective, for a being to be free and a cause of himself, it is necessary that he/she be a person endowed with a spiritual and incorruptible soul, on which his or her cognitive and free activity is based. An artificially intelligent robotic entity does not meet this standard. As an artefact and not a natural reality, the AI/robotic entity is invented by human beings to fulfil a purpose imposed by human beings. It can become a perfect entity that performs operations in quantity and quality more precisely than a human being, but it cannot choose for itself a different purpose from what it was programmed for by a human being. As such, the artificially intelligent robot is a means at the service of humans.