Learning to Live with Strange Error: Beyond Trustworthiness in Artificial Intelligence Ethics

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics:1-13 (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Position papers on artificial intelligence (AI) ethics are often framed as attempts to work out technical and regulatory strategies for attaining what is commonly called trustworthy AI. In such papers, the technical and regulatory strategies are frequently analyzed in detail, but the concept of trustworthy AI is not. As a result, it remains unclear. This paper lays out a variety of possible interpretations of the concept and concludes that none of them is appropriate. The central problem is that, by framing the ethics of AI in terms of trustworthiness, we reinforce unjustified anthropocentric assumptions that stand in the way of clear analysis. Furthermore, even if we insist on a purely epistemic interpretation of the concept, according to which trustworthiness just means measurable reliability, it turns out that the analysis will, nevertheless, suffer from a subtle form of anthropocentrism. The paper goes on to develop the concept of strange error, which serves both to sharpen the initial diagnosis of the inadequacy of trustworthy AI and to articulate the novel epistemological situation created by the use of AI. The paper concludes with a discussion of how strange error puts pressure on standard practices of assessing moral culpability, particularly in the context of medicine.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

It Is Strange.Per Jespersen - 1990 - Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis 11 (1).
Moral Knowledge and the Genealogy of Error.Nicholas Smyth - 2017 - Journal of Value Inquiry 51 (3):455-474.
Anthropocentrism: A Misunderstood Problem.Tim Hayward - 1997 - Environmental Values 6 (1):49 - 63.
Trust and Trustworthiness.Stephen Wright - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (3):615-627.
Moral Error Theory and the Argument from Epistemic Reasons.Richard Rowland - 2012 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 7 (1):1-24.
The Error In 'The Error In The Error Theory'.Richard Joyce - 2011 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (3):519-534.
The uncertainty of certainty in clinical ethics.Erich H. Loewy - 1987 - Journal of Medical Humanities 8 (1):26-33.
Ethical Machines?Ariela Tubert - 2018 - Seattle University Law Review 41 (4).

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-01-11

Downloads
12 (#929,405)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Bert Heinrichs
Universität Bonn
Charles Rathkopf
Jülich Research Center

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Robots, Law and the Retribution Gap.John Danaher - 2016 - Ethics and Information Technology 18 (4):299–309.
In AI We Trust: Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, and Reliability.Mark Ryan - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (5):2749-2767.
Culpable ignorance.Holly Smith - 1983 - Philosophical Review 92 (4):543-571.

View all 9 references / Add more references