The Pageless Book

Photo Above by Rodrigo Achá. Photo Below by Hobvias Sudoneighm. Final Photo by Martin Kingsley.

In the science fiction movie “I, Robot” Will Smith plays the part of Detective Spooner who is paranoid of artificial intelligence and robotics. His reason for distrusting AI is very telling. Both the Detective and a young girl had been in a major car accident, trapping them in cars that were taking on water. The emergency rescue robots evaluated the situation and decided that the Detective had a slightly better chance of surviving, so they disregarded his demands that the child be saved first and saved his life instead. By the time the rescue robots turned their attention to the girl, she was already dead. In Detective Spooner’s mind, this was a serious flaw in the robot’s programming - they were too logical to be trusted to make moral decisions.

Morality is a particular process of human reasoning that dictates what the best course of action would be for humanity both as a whole and as an individual. Sometimes, such as in the example made by this movie, morality requires that we sacrifice ourselves for the greater good of all humanity. Most of the time, it is what we don’t do that defines our morality. However, to assume this means that we would be able to define what is moral and immoral in any given circumstance invites the formulation of an absolute morality without any choice involved.

Ultimately, it is choice which makes morality valuable. When choice is removed from the equation, morality ceases to be a noble characteristic. If choice in moral decision is stripped away, human emotion concerning morality no longer has meaning. Morality becomes a mathematical equation to be used and potentially abused by the best and worst of humanity in equal measure. It becomes a tool, and morality should never be reduced to being merely a tool.

As pointed out before, morality is a function of human reasoning - should this not mean that morality must be logical? No. It is not merely logic, if only because our emotions and personal experience form an integral part of our human reasoning. There is this dangerous and faulty notion that logic is synonymous with reason, and that morality can be broken down into a few phrases that require no interpretation. Trying to boil morality down to a set of absolutes, no matter how eloquent in their simplicity, removes the human element which defines morality. Even the Golden rule - “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” - requires a large dose of thought and common sense.

Detective Spooner understood this, even though he didn’t know how to properly express it. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before the artificial intelligence found a logical interpretation of the morality coded into it’s system that was inherently immoral. In the movie, that interpretation lead the AI to believe that in order to protect humanity from itself, all choice must be taken away. The robots, which had become such an important part of human life, turned on the humans who had made them and threatened to place all of society under their tyrannical rule.

While we don’t face such a drastic turn of events outside our works of fiction, those who ascribe to an absolute version of morality frequently make poor decisions that affect us all. Morality is not separate from the human experience; assuming that all moral decisions, can be reduced to binary thinking is not only laziness, but also dangerous to us all. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of moral absolutes. So when I tell you that morality is a function of human reasoning, do not assume that I am telling you how to think or what to think - instead hear me as telling you to think and come to your own conclusions.

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written by John \\ tags: Artificial Intelligence, Humanity, Morality, Reason, Will Smith