Abstract
The debates about ethics in the context of artificial intelligence have been recently focusing primarily on various types of utilitarianisms. This article suggests a categorization of the various presented utilitarianisms into static utilitarianisms and dynamic utilitarianisms. It explains the main features of both. Then, it presents the challenges the utilitarianisms in each group need to be able to deal with. Since it appears that those cannot be overcome in the context of each group alone, the article suggests a possibility of using a combination of the two categories of utilitarianisms to resolve most of the challenges without the need to abandon the concept of utilitarianisms as such. Even this possibility comes with its own issues that might not be resolved within the boundaries of utilitarianisms, however. Therefore, another potential alternative based on a combination of various ethical systems is suggested and briefly explored.
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Notes
It is necessary to point out that utility in the classical utilitarianism translated to well-being or happiness. In modern contexts, however, utility can be any assigned value that we consider worth maximizing.
It could probably be argued that static utilitarianisms could circumvent this issue by including various fail-safes to prevent potentially disastrous consequences, but it is hard to imagine how this would work in practice. All of these fail-safes would only treat the effects and not the causes of problematic behavior, since treating the causes would require some changes in the utility value function, which could lead to further problematic behavior.
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The research was funded via a university grant (Antropocentrismus v etice, University of Ostrava).
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Cvik, Š. Categorization and challenges of utilitarianisms in the context of artificial intelligence. AI & Soc 37, 291–297 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01169-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01169-1