The Final Alert on Ethics in AI Based Technology

Abstract

The chapter is titled as a “Final Alert on Ethics…” as a wakeup call for humanity. It suggests that either mankind should pullup its socks, tighten its belt to prevent disasters on a prescription of limiting its unbridled expansion into consumerism or they would be left with no options but to adopt a technology in which machine intelligence would take over human intelligence. The World Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Disaster Management organized by the Special Centre for Disaster Research at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi provoked transdisciplinary questions on ethics and few found some answers. These questions in the end did precipitate a parameter for performance assessment of governments, political economy of investments and the direction of preparedness in disaster management. As fragile habitats suffer further precipitation either by climate crises or any other direct human intervention, it is paramount as a society to have clear ethical principles on an adoption of a new technology. Any initiative on disaster management and recovery has to be guided through ethical governance. I refer here not to a philosophical disembodied discussion of ethics but what philosophers call virtue ethics—a lived, embodied experience of wisdom and discernment. Such ethics asks us to question what sort of people we should be and how we should live. I also rely on the profound tradition of dharma. Based in Indian philosophy dharma is translated as doing one’s duty while being infused with maitri (friendship) and karuna (compassion) for all sentient beings.