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From posthumanism to ethics of artificial intelligence

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Abstract

Posthumanism is one of the well-known and significant concepts in the present day. It impacted numerous contemporary fields like philosophy, literary theories, art, and culture for the last few decades. The movement has been concentrated around the technological development of present days due to industrial advancement in society and the current proliferated daily usage of technology. Posthumanism indicated a deconstruction of our radical conception of ‘human’, and it further shifts our societal value alignment system to a novel dimension. The majority of our population is getting deeply involved in virtual reality in daily life. Sooner or later, we shall get a different conception of ‘biological human being’ through the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. If an automated artificial system could replace the human brain and repair any physical loss of our biological body, it will certainly become a journey towards immortality for scientists. However, we must analyze whether posthumanism will consider ‘hybrid human beings’ as moral agents, similar to biological humans. This is why, in the future, the relation between biological human beings and posthumans will play an active role in designing artificial moral agents. Whether the future posthumans would overpower biological humanity or both of them would work as peers to form a digital utopian society and create new dimensions of rationality is still a case of anticipation. Our aim in this paper is to critically analyze the authenticity of the posthuman cyborg as an agent, their relations with humans and the emergence of ‘AI ethics’.

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Notes

  1. Cusack (2018), pp. 169–170.

  2. Nietzsche (1996[1887]), pp. 11–38.

  3. Herbrechter (2013), pp. 31–73.

  4. See, Nath (2009), Ch. 1 and 2.

  5. Bostrom (2008), p. 107.

  6. Zey (2018), pp. 105–116.

  7. Ellul (1964), p. 64.

  8. Lewis (2000), pp. 38–39.

  9. Welsch and Sandbothe (1997), p. 76.

  10. This information is collected from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy of 'Postmodernism', published on February 5, 2015. Aleysworth (2015)

  11. Derrida has expressed his famous theory of ‘deconstruction’ in his book Of Grammatology (1997). His ‘deconstruction’ was a milestone for the analysis of meaning and word. This theory has been used in different literary and philosophical perspectives. It became a fundamental characteristic of the postmodern movement in history. Derrida (1997), pp. 14–24.

  12. This information is collected from the Encyclopedia Britannica of 'Deconstruction', published on September 27, 2018. Duignan (2018)

  13. Welsch (2017), pp. 75–86.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Hassan (1977), pp. 830–850.

  17. Pasulka (2018), p. 51.

  18. Alighieri (2003).

  19. Hudson (1888).

  20. Ferrando (2019), p. 2.

  21. This information has been collected from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive (Fall 2017 edition) of ‘The Moral Status of Animals’, published on August 23, 2017. Gruen (2017)

  22. Beauvoir (2009), pp. 23–38.

  23. Clark and Chalmers (1998), pp. 7–19.

  24. Tegmark (2017), pp. 155–156.

  25. Kurzweil (2005), p. 198.

  26. Russell and Norvig (2010), pp. 17–19.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Bostrom (2014), pp. 6–13.

  29. Kasparov (1996).

  30. The information has been collected from the Healthcare IT News report, which was published on December 3, 2015, by Bernie Monegain (2015)

  31. “Named as Vyomamitra, the robot was unveiled at the inaugural session of a symposium organized by the ISRO, International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and Astronautical Society of India (ASI) on the human spaceflight program in Bengaluru on January 22, 2020. Sivan, during the inaugural function of the three-day symposium titled ‘Human Spaceflight and Exploration: Present Challenges and Future Trends’ also said that ISRO would undertake two unmanned missions- in December 2020 and June 2021-ahead of India's first manned mission Gagayaan in December 2021”- This news was published on http://www.indianexpress.com on January 22, 2020. (Meet Vyom Mitra and ISRO's Robot Which Will Travel to Space 2020)

  32. The information has been collected from a blog called ‘Wait But Why?, which has reported about the company’s aim with the title of ‘Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future’. The report was published on April 20, 2017, by Tim Urban (2017)

  33. For more information see https://humanityplus.org/about/.

  34. Nayar (2014), pp. 14–18.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Forlano (2017), pp. 16–29.

  37. For more information see http://symposium.hybridmatters.net/. Hybrid Matter's Symposium (2016)

  38. For more information, see http://www.posthumans.org/nyu-symposium-2016.html. Posthuman Future (2016)

  39. This information was collected from ‘I, Robot reviews’, which is published on the Metacritic website.

  40. Bostrom (2014), pp. 283–286.

  41. Tegmark (2017), pp. 114–128.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Wallach (2015).

  44. Nath (2017), pp. 563–571.

  45. Hegel (2018[1807]), pp. 108–116.

  46. Coeckelbergh (2015), p. 229.

  47. Bryson and Wilks (2010), pp. 63–74.

  48. Bostrom (2014), pp. 140–148.

  49. Searle (1980), pp. 417–424.

  50. Bostrom (2014), pp. 4–5.

  51. Anderson and Anderson (2011), p. 1.

  52. Wallach and Allen (2009), p. 55.

  53. Nath and Sahu (2020), pp. 103–111.

  54. Descartes (1984), p. 17.

  55. Asimov (1950).

  56. Elon Musk has claimed that “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon”, MIT. McFarland (2014)

  57. Kurzweil (2005), pp. 16–36.

  58. Bostrom (2014), p. 227.

  59. Ibid, p. 253.

  60. Ibid, pp. 266–270.

  61. Jones (2018), p. 365.

  62. Gunkel (2018), pp. 87–99.

  63. Coeckelbergh (2020), pp. 34.

  64. Bostrom (2005), pp. 87–101.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Chiew (2014), pp. 51–69.

  67. Wallach and Allen (2009), p. 39.

  68. Yudkowsky (2011), p. 2.

  69. Etzioni and Etzioni (2017), pp. 403–418.

  70. Powers (2009), pp. 15–16.

  71. Etzioni and Etzioni (2017), pp. 403–418.

  72. Ferrando (2019), p. 255.

  73. Bostrom (2003), p. 33.

  74. Francis Fukuyama has demonstrated the negative impacts of genetic engineering in his book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of The Biotechnology Revolution (2002). He demanded strict governance for its application to protect it from any kind of misuse. pp. 181–218.

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Correspondence to Rajakishore Nath.

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Nath, R., Manna, R. From posthumanism to ethics of artificial intelligence. AI & Soc 38, 185–196 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01274-1

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