8 The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

The dramatic theoretical and practical progress of artificial intelligence in the past decade has raised serious concerns about its ethical consequences. In response, more than eighty organizations have proposed sets of principles for ethical artificial intelligence. The proposed principles overlap in their concern with values such as transparency, justice, fairness, human benefits, avoiding harm, responsibility, and privacy. But no substantive discussion of how principles for ethical AI can be analyzed, justified, and reconciled has taken place. Moreover, the values assumed by these principles have received little analysis and assessment. Perhaps issues about principles and values can be evaded by Stuart Russell's proposal that beneficial AI concerns people's preferences rather than their ethical principles and values.