There are many interesting questions about ethics in artificial intelligence. But first, what is ethics? Cambridge dictionary defines the word ethic as a system of accepted beliefs that controls behavior, especially such a system based on morals.
In this definition, it is clearly mentioned that without moral values, the acceptability of selective behavior in a system does not exist hence, no morals indicate no ethics. Humans have moral values in life and set ethics on the basis of them. And we know there are many natural things which we can’t create in labs. These ethics help us to set some principles in our life. The point is, does artificial intelligence have artificial ethics codes? The answer is yes. But up to a certain limit and they are not auto-generated.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Generally, people consider artificial intelligence as technology. But, it is not. It is a concept of database science to make a machine capable of thinking, acting, and learning.
In simple words, whatever the output comes from any artificial intelligence system/machine, it is based on the investigation carried out by the algorithm of the artificial intelligence in its database for similar input. The AI algorithm filters all the matched output and delivers the suitable one. This process takes no time. AI programs generally cover three cognitive skills
- Learning
- Reasoning
- Correction
Ethics in Artificial Intelligence
Before understanding the ethics in artificial intelligence, let’s study why we need ethics? There are several times when the right and wrong decisions are predictable, what about those situations where the result is not clear? That time you need ethics. It helps us to make a difference between right and wrong decisions.
Decision-making skills are the real story behind the origin of ethics. But when we talk about ethics in artificial intelligence, indirectly we are pointing out ethics of developers. They are the actual persons who embed ethical programs in the database of AI. This study comes under the ethics of technology specific to robots.
For example, Alexa, Siri, Google, etc have their own database. Whatever the command you give to them, they receive and save it for the future as input and check whether the relevant output is available in their database or not. If it is available, they will respond correctly and improve its database storage.
No presence of free will in artificial intelligence doesn’t allow us to develop the morals in it. The ethics codes embed in artificial intelligence and the algorithm of AI plays a large role in its usages, however, there is certainty in this process. It is also debatable that AI can not be selective. It is just predictable.
In the recent past, AI became a famous topic among scholars. Everyone has their own explanation. Those who are against, they say that it could create unemployment, security issues, inequality in distributing wealth created by artificial intelligence, and much more. They are right. Self-driving cars, predictive policing, creating fake news on social media platforms and AI weapons that can kill without the help of men are the perfect examples of it.
There are many ethical questions about AI. Still, we can not deny that AI is our future. We are very close to this reality. Big companies like Microsoft, Google, Tesla, SAP are working hard on AI-based machines and technology. In future, it is also possible that all the ethical issues could be solved permanently and AI will make our life more easy and comfortable.
Presently AI assists us in every area of our lives, either we are reading emails, listening to music, traffic directions or using any database technology. AI can meaningfully improve the lives of people and the impact of it on society is amazing, till now.
Although current AI capabilities offers us a few ethical issues that are not already present in the design of cars or power plants, the approach of AI algorithms toward more humanlike thought forecasts predictable complications. While AI can do a lot of good we must be wise about AI in the hands of evil-minded users.