All about the human: A Buddhist take on AI ethics

Chien‐Te Lin

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2023, vol. 32, issue 3, 1113-1122

Abstract: As AI technology becomes more influential, ethical considerations surrounding its application are becoming increasingly relevant. In this paper, I reflect on some moral questions from a Buddhist perspective and consider the moral status of AI to evaluate its function and purpose in our lives. Since a robot lacks the capacity to experience suffering and has no conscience, AI ethics are possible only as ethics about robots and not as ethics for robots. Despite having no concrete moral status, robots cannot be deemed entirely morally insignificant as they exist as moral objects toward which moral agents have a duty. Our unique endowment as human beings is the intelligence for moral deliberation as we develop AI technologies and determine the future direction of humanity. From a Buddhist point of view, there is potential to advance our spiritual growth through the realization of the interdependence between humans and AI. As we recognize the uniqueness of our humanity and take a middle‐way approach, the rise of robots need not threaten our existence but could instead catapult humanity into a new dawn.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12547

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:buseth:v:32:y:2023:i:3:p:1113-1122

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().