HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies

Ethics in Robotics and Intelligent Machines

Fiorella Battaglia — 2023-12-30

Challenges for ‘Community’ in Science and Values

Charles H. Pence — 2023-12-22

Philosophers of science often make reference — whether tacitly or explicitly — to the notion of a scientific community. Sometimes, such references are useful to make our object of analysis tractable in the philosophy of science. For others, tracking or understanding particular features of the development of science proves to be tied to notions of a scientific community either as a target of theoretical or social intervention. We argue that the structure of contemporary scientific research poses two unappreciated, or at least underappreciated, challenges to this concept of the “scientific community” in the philosophy of science. In particular, we will present two case studies from robotics research, broadly construed, which show that (1) the boundedness of the scientific community is threatened when private citizens can develop scientific and technological advances at minimal expense (democratization), and (2) the discreteness of scientific research programs is threatened by the complexly interrelated environment of contemporary scientific work (interconnectivity). Taken together, the extent of democratization and interconnectivity present a significant challenge for any practically oriented philosophy of science, one which we hope will be taken on directly by philosophers in the future.

Hybrid Ethics for Generative AI: Some Philosophical Inquiries on GANs

Antonio Carnevale — 2023-12-30

Until now, the mass spread of fake news and its negative consequences have implied mainly textual content towards a loss of citizens' trust in institutions. Recently, a new type of machine learning framework has arisen, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) – a class of deep neural network models capable of creating multimedia content (photos, videos, audio) that simulate accurate content with extreme precision.

While there are several areas of worthwhile application of GANs – e.g., in the field of audio-visual production, human-computer interactions, satire, and artistic creativity – their deceptive uses, at least as currently foreseeable, are just as numerous and worrying. The main concern is linked to the so-called “deepfakes”, fake images or videos that simulate real events with extreme precision. When trained on a human face, GANs can make the face assume hyper-realistic movements, expressions and (verbal and non-verbal) communication abilities. This technology poses an urgent threat to the governance of democratic processes concerning the production of public opinions and political discourses, with significant potential for reality-altering and disinformation.

After a short introduction of their current technical state-of-the-art, in this paper we want to enquire the GANs` socio-technical system alongside different and intertwined philosophical accounts. Firstly, we will argue about the conditions that make perceived a GANs-generated content as trustworthy, arguing also about the general effects GANs might have on the perceived trustworthiness of individuals. Thereafter, we will discuss about the inadequacy to approach GANs only as perception-altering technology. Against this backdrop, we will propose a theoretical turn that considers the human-machine relationships of trustworthiness as elements of a broader hybrid socio-technical systems. This turn come up with political repercussions that we will discuss in the last part of the paper.

Technological Unemployment and Meaning in Life, a Buen Vivir Critique of the Virtual Utopia

Ignacio Cea — 2023-12-30

In this article, we address the problem of the potential crisis in people’s life’s meaning due to massive automation-driven technological unemployment. Assuming that the problem of (re)distribution of economic resources to the whole of society in such a scenario will be solved (e.g. through provision of a Universal Basic Income), the question arises concerning the meaning of people’s lives in a world in which almost everyone does not have to (or even could not) work in order to live. Here, we side with many current proposals that paid work is not the only possible source of meaning and hence, that a meaningful life could indeed be led in a post-work society. We especially focus on one of the most developed accounts, Danaher’s Virtual Utopia (Danaher, 2016, 2019, 2022). According to him, living immersed in playful virtual worlds where new, expanded and personalized possibilities of personal and collective experiences and actions, could not only be perfectly meaningful lives, but furthermore, “be the utopia we are looking for” (Danaher, 2019, p. 270). However, our analysis will suggest that although it is a very well thought and carefully articulated position, it suffers from various important problems. Our criticism will be based on an alternative framework to think about life’s meaning and the conditions for leading a good life in general. This alternative is based on the philosophy of buen vivir (“good living”). This notion has its roots in common aspects of various Latin American indigenous cultures regarding a community-centered way of life where humans, society and nature are taken to be deeply interconnected and interdependent, and where the notions of respect, harmony and balance are at the core of this interrelationship (Gudynas, 2011; Acosta, 2008; Beling et al., 2021). Buen vivir has many facets, but we will focus on three: the importance of healthy human communities, the human-nature relationship, and the intrinsic value of nature. Based on these, we argue that the Virtual Utopia is not a good candidate for human’s post-work utopia because i) it unnecessarily augments the environmental damage that is already involved in massive labor automation; ii) it entails an unnecessary and detrimental dependence on technology for human relationships; and iii) increases the severance of the link between humanity and nature. We conclude that the buen vivir approach is a promising candidate for an alternative utopian project, but one that needs further construction.

Ecosystem Based on an Extended and Responsible Ethics for Mobile Robots and Artificial Intelligence in Cuba

Giovanni Fernández Valdés — 2023-12-30

Our main hypothesis is that an extended moral agent cannot fulfill their expectation of “extendedness” without a dynamical and evolutionary ecosystem where the agent develops and behave properly. It is important to establish a bridge between extended moral agents and ecosystems for two reasons: first, because there is not an enough direct theoretical reflection about this link. The scholars focus has been independently in improving the “extended agent theory”, the concepts of “ecosystem” or “ecosystem of innovation”. Second, if we want to understand the wide scope of the decentered ethics in design of mobile robots and AI these two theoretical frames cannot be seen separately but in join interdependency.

Robots, Eldercare and Meaningful Lives

Russell J Woodruff — 2023-12-30

In this paper we examine how the use of robots in caring for elders can impact the meaningfulness of elders’ lives. We present a framework for understanding ‘meaningfulness in life’, and then apply that framework in discussing ways in which the use of robots to assist in activities of daily living can preserve, enhance or undermine the meaningfulness of elders’ lives. We conclude with a discussion of if and how having false beliefs about companion robots can affect meaningfulness in the life of the person having those false beliefs.

The Ethical Dimension of Artificial Intelligence: Biometric Identity and Human Behaviour

Ughetta Vergari — 2023-12-30

The debate over the ethical repercussions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot disregard the “sum total of ideas that bring into evidence a system of ethical reference that justifies that profound dimension of technology as a central element in the attainment of a ‘finalized’ perfection of man^”(Galvan 2001). This implies an analysis of the ancient processes that might help to understand the complexities of contemporary society and the new challenges posed to human development. Being at the core of the dichotomy between the human and the machine, biometrics will be central to the analysis carried out in this paper. Its measurement of physiological characteristics and behavioural patterns has politico-philosophical and legal consequences in terms of recognition and personal identity, as the use of artificial intelligence has shown. In information society, customs and traditions, cultural and communication processes, language and the self-determination of the individual have gradually acquired a stretched dimension that has led to a re-definition of the social structures within which the exchange of knowledge and data takes place, with AI-based technological devices playing a key role in such a scenario. The issue of biometric identity becomes highly complex when combined with the potential of digital services, as it is at this level that it shows the large number of interconnections deriving from social and political choices. The benefits of increased interconnection are limited by the risk of intrusion into the (social, personal or private) human sphere, which might pose a threat to both the physical, biological body, with its related freedoms (habeas corpus), and the digital body, in its multiple forms and media representations (habeas data).

The Possible Relationship Between Law and Ethics in the Context of Artificial Intelligence Regulation

Livia Aulino — 2023-12-30

The latest academic discussion has focused on the potential and risks associated with technological systems. In this perspective, defining a set of legal rules could be the priority but this action appears extremely difficult at the European level and, therefore, in the last years, a set of ethical principles contained in many different documents has been published. The need to develop trustworthy and human-centric AI technologies is accomplished by creating these two types of rule sets: legal and ethical. The paper aims to critically analyse and compare these rule sets in order to understand their possible relationships in the regulation of legal problems, not only theoretically but also, where present, in some practical applications of AI, such as self-driving cars, smart toys, smart contracts and legal design. Indeed, the purpose is to identify how legal rules and ethical principles can interact for adequate regulation of AI, with particular regard to the fields of application that will be analysed.

Foundational Questions About Values in Information Technology

Fiorella Battaglia — 2023-12-30

In the contemporary debate about values, information technology constitutes an important source of hard ethical questions and in turn is a testing area for the moral theory of values. Values are difficult to track down and yet there are a number of inquiries starting from economics, social psychology, ethics, and political theory that engage with the cognitive, epistemic, and moral status of values. This paper is a contribution to an account of values in connection with information technology. It argues that information technology may provide further support to a theory of values that is able to embrace the transformative effects of the digital revolution. In particular, it is plausible that a non-ideal reflection on digital wrongdoings is better equipped to produce substantive knowledge about values that have been undermined than a different approach focused on ideal guiding values. Moreover, information technology overcomes the vaunted fact/value dichotomy and supports the fact/value entanglement. As the principal concern of data-mining and machine-learning communities are ways of remedying a remarkable number of biases and conformism in techno-social systems, it is within the bounds of possibility to supplement the non-ideal theory from this new practical angle. I therefore call for a fully conceptual consideration of values drawing on the experience and reflection that is growing in the field of information technology.