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Machine Morality
Machines and Moral Reasoning
Thomas M. Powers on how a computer might process Kant’s moral imperative.
Philosophers have worried about how to compare humans and machines ever since Alan Turing proposed his famous ‘intelligence test’ in his 1950 Mind article ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’. If the successful imitation of a human conversation is one sufficient condition for intelligence, as Turing thought, just what else might demonstrate intelligence? How about playing a good game of chess, or navigating a cluttered room to sweep up? If these and similar activities are to count as signs of intelligence, then we humans don’t need to procreate in order to bring more of it into the world. Thanks to companies like IBM and iRobot, intelligence can be purchased in a box – or at least, in an organized jumble of plastic, metal, semiconductors and software, brought to life with a bit of electricity. (Dr Frankenstein, you have competition!)
But of course there are deeper worries about the implications of intelligent machines, and if there’s anything philosophers like to do, it’s worry deeply. Turing and the computer engineers who followed him have invited a kind of conceptual erosion of the human person, it is feared.
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