Adapting (Bio)ethics to Technology and Vice Versa: When to Fight and When to Collaborate With Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly within the last decade and the application of ‘deep learning’, has simultaneously accelerated human fears of the changes AI provokes in human behaviour. The question is not any more if the new phenomena, like artificially-induced consciousness, empathy or creation, will be widely used, but whether they will be used in ethically acceptable ways and for ethically acceptable purposes.

Departing from a diagnosis of the state humans have brought themselves to by (ab)use of technology, the present chapter investigates the possibility of a systematic study of adaptations human society will have to consider in order to guarantee the obeyance to the fundamental ethical values and thus its spiritual survival. To that end, a new discipline – epharmology (from the Greek epharmozein = to adapt) is proposed, together with its aims and methodology.

Citation

Rinčić, I. and Muzur, A. (2024), "Adapting (Bio)ethics to Technology and Vice Versa: When to Fight and When to Collaborate With Artificial Intelligence", Stelios, S. and Theologou, K. (Ed.) The Ethics Gap in the Engineering of the Future, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 137-156. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-635-520241008