Will Teaching Morality Make Artificial Intelligence Less of a Brat?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer the next big thing, it is a big thing in every Industry. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been purely integrated into our blood through various sectors and now whether we are talking about the business industry, healthcare industry, or beauty industry the presence of Artificial Intelligence can be easily noticed, and how it is contributing to bringing revolutionary transformation globally. From start-ups to large firms are opting for AI-powered tools to enhance their business to a large scale.

In 2002, we had to wait so long to download a single song using a 56k dial-up modem. Audio cassettes were still very much in trend. Coming forward in 2022, we can use our voice to instruct our phone or car to play our favorite tracks. can We can sign into our favorite music streaming service automatically and it would display us our favorite music and artists that may fit depending on the mood, the time, or the occasion. Nearly all electrical systems in their house are automated to operate on their schedule for example it reminds us to get groceries, and switch on and off the lights and other appliances while moving in and out of the house. In a short span of two decades, we have moved on from waiting for technology to respond to machines and systems responding and following our commands. AI-powered tools combined with Data science and automation are already playing a significant role in our lives.

Technology is steadily and gradually approaching a level of intelligence that can anticipate our necessary thing. We are in the golden age of AI, and yet we have hardly begun to grasp its applications. Such as if one has a habit of drinking coffee every morning, Artificial Intelligence can easily learn this routine. But at present, it's difficult for AI to approach our minds about what we are thinking about while we drink our coffee. And probably this could be the next step in the evolution of AI could be your Google Home or Amazon Alexa knowing our daily planning. AI-Robotics has been transformed from carrying out repetitive tasks to higher-order decision-making. We have barely started to see AI's capabilities. In the next decade, AI will likely impact our lives in all possible ways. While we rely on AI to perform our daily needs, what if we go ahead to outsource convoluted thinking and decision-making? Our decisions making capability is based on our consciousness, empathy, and moral standing. When machines perform for us, does it have to take the burden of the complex web of human morality?

Human decision-making isn't completely a matter of logic or technology. Over the age of human civilization, one has developed genuinely complex moral codes and ethics. These are more dependent on societal norms such as upbringing, culture, and, most importantly, religion. The problem is that morality is an amorphous notion with no agreed-upon universals. Morality, decision-making society, or religion could strike at the heart of everything. And it may vary depending on the situation and who makes the decision. We are even not able to balance our cognitive bias, how do we set a map for machines to avoid data bias? There are various testimonies that some of our technologies are already as flawed as we are. Facial recognition systems in Snapchat and digital assistants contain signs of discrimination against women and people of color. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook break down to control hate speech, despite the wide deployment of artificial intelligence. A growing number of computer scientists and ethicists are working to address those issues.

The most common thing is for AI to follow prescribed rules of morality per defined groups or societies. Imagine buying a basic code of ethics and upgrading it with morality packages depending on your proclivities. For Christians, the morality pack will follow the standard Christian code of ethics (or as nearly approximatively as possible). In this assumptive case, we will be controlling the moral principles that the machine will follow. It turns into a problem when that decision is taken by someone else. Just imagine the implications of an authoritarian government implementing its version of morality over ruthlessly monitored citizens. The debate over who could even make such a call would have far-reaching implications.

As complicated as morality in AI is, it pays to remember that humans are a tenacious breed. Almost all of our present technological advances had seemed impossible at some point in the past. It may take decades of effort in trial and error, but we can keep hope as we have already started on the first draft with projects like Delphi. In Seattle, researchers at an AI lab invited the Allen Institute of AI to invent new technology, last month which was designed to generate moral judgments. They named it Delphi after the religious oracle of the ancient Greeks. Can someone who visits the Delphi website ask for an ethical decree?