Ethical Machines

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Here’s How You Should Think about Ethics

This book gives you advice on how to build, procure, and deploy AI in an ethically (and thus reputationally, regulatory, and legally) safe way, and to do it at scale. We’re not here to tackle existential and metaphysical questions like, “How does AI affect what we should think about what it is to be human?” or “What does AI teach us about the nature of consciousness?” That said, we cannot get clear direction without clear conceptual foundations. This chapter lays those foundations.

The senior executive who described AI ethics as “squishy” wasn’t some rube. He was a person with a long and successful career in risk and compliance. And the others who describe it as “fuzzy” and “subjective” likewise are ...