Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2

2Ethics and Transhumanism: Control using Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

2.1. Introduction to transhumanism

There are two paradigm changes that will quickly transform our lives and that raise questions of ethics: robotics and transhumanism (Chapter 2) and the uberization of our society (Chapter 3).

In this chapter, we analyze the implementation of ethics in new business environments, monitored and controlled through robotics- and artificial intelligence (AI)-based support systems.

Indeed, just to take an example, robotics is able to replace or compensate a physical deficiency we may have (e.g. a missing hand). This is considered as an advancement. Sometimes, however, instead of just being a physical recovery, we could implement an enhanced functionality, such as the transplantation of a super-hand. The result will be much better, and anybody could agree with the solution.

When, thanks to the new technologies, we develop a disease-free human being, or, thanks to AI, replace the given intellectual disability of a human being with a sophisticated feature enabling super-intelligence, we are faced with a problem of ethics. This is the case in industry when we develop so-called “augmented systems” [FER 16].

Figure 2.1. Olympic Games – Oscar Pistorius

When we use an exo-skeleton, or when we connect ourselves to a super computer endowed with a powerful AI reasoning system, we ...