The Ethos of Artificial Intelligence: Using AI to Promote the Good Life While Avoiding Harm

The Ethos of Artificial Intelligence: Using AI to Promote the Good Life While Avoiding Harm

The public debut of ChatGPT was a watershed moment. It awakened us to the fact that artificial intelligence—a technology that had long been a source of fantasy and fiction—was finally here and operating among us. For the first time in history, ordinary people could converse directly with an AI chatbot. The thrill of this 'first encounter' with artificial intelligence, coupled with the astonishing capabilities that AI chatbots displayed, gave rise to concerns about whether AI was sentient or self-aware. Although we have been using AI-assisted applications for years in such forms as facial recognition and language translation, our encounters with AI chatbots stoked our imaginations in ways that these earlier applications did not. Why do we suddenly feel threatened by artificial intelligence? The news is filled with warnings that artificial intelligence may ultimately doom humanity. The ethos of the tech leaders who are unleashing AI is questionable. How can we take advantage of powerful new AI capabilities to promote the good life' and avoid being harmed? What are the real risks of AI? This book offers some crucial public guidance for the safe use of AI. It seeks to clarify common misconceptions about the 'nature' of AI and recommends ethical guardrails that will help us to use AI wisely and in a way that benefits humankind. This work is not meant to be a technical explanation of artificial intelligence Large Language Models (LLMs) or a definitive guide to the ethics of AI. It is a look at the ethos of the AI community with a survey of global principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence. The authors review global best practices for living with AI along with practical suggestions for regulating artificial intelligence applications. The Ethos of Artificial Intelligence: Using AI to Promote the Good Life While Avoiding Harm by Joe Danielewicz and Kirstin Thomas is an essential and in-depth guide. The authors explain the nature of AI based on a clear account of its gradual rise and development. They explain ethics and values, virtues and morality in-depth, including ethical theory, then discuss the sorts of moral and ethical issues that are most commonly associated with AI. What distinguishes this book is that it underscores and makes clear the urgency of developing an ethos of AI, supported by ethical norms and legal standards, so that people will use this powerful AI tool responsibly—to not just promote the good life and the common good but also prevent and avoid the real and potential harms, both the systemic harms built into AI itself as well as the harms wreaked by wicked users of AI. Danielewicz and Thomas remind us that human fear, uncertainty, and unease have always accompanied the introduction and rise of startling innovations. ChatGPT remains an incredibly useful tool. It must be used intelligently and ethically. The texts it generates should be considered as source material for consideration-- food for critical thought rather than gospel for reverential recitation. From the Foreword by Kirill O. Thompson, Ph.D. National Taiwan University We were pleased to be named one of the Groundbreaking books on the future of Artificial Intelligence of 2024 by Dean Anthony & Sarah-Jayne Gratton. Artificial intelligence is changing the way humans interact with their environment and with each other. AI will have profound effects on how humans live and work. From accurately predicting protein structures that are needed to create new drugs and therapies, to building robots that perform science and hazardous work, AI has the potential to change our lives for the better. Humans still have the power to control the software we create assuming we find the will to wield that power with intention and wisdom. AI can be used in so many ways to promote 'the good life' that it will be a tragedy if we don't use it wisely. The news is filled with warnings that artificial intelligence may ultimately doom humanity. The ethos of the tech leaders who are unleashing AI is questionable. How can we take advantage of powerful new AI capabilities to promote 'the good life' and avoid being harmed? This book offers some crucial public guidance for the safe use of AI. It seeks to clarify common misconceptions about the 'nature' of AI and recommends ethical guardrails that will help us to use AI wisely and in a way that benefits humankind.  Joe Danielewicz worked in Information Technology at global companies like Motorola and General Motors as a data modeler and enterprise architect. Danielewicz has been a speaker at DAMA, Data Modeling Zone and Enterprise Architecture conferences. His previous books include Models, Metaphor and Meaning: How Models Use Metaphor to Convey Meaning and Data Governance: Managing the Language and Meaning of your Business.  Joe Danielewicz lives in Tempe, Arizona and is a member of Phoenix DAMA.   Kirstin Thomas has worked in education for over 20 years as a teacher and academic librarian. S