Ethics of AI

 

"The Ethics of AI in Everyday Decision-Making: Can Machines Be Moral?"

From an abstract concept, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved into a force that cannot be neglected in shaping lives. It decides whom to hire, whom to lend to, and even who is a security risk. AI has been used in every sector in India, ranging from recruitment centres like TCS'AI-recruitment software to credit rating for lenders. Even as AI assures efficiency and objectivity, it also raises profound philosophical and ethical questions. Can AI, as a mechanism without consciousness, ever be a moral agent? If morality is something that emerges out of reason, as Kant believed, then does rational organisational design in AI imply ethical reasoning or is this advanced automation? Issues confronting AI are no longer merely technological but finally philosophical, rattling our very idea of fairness, responsibility, and the nature of human agency.

The Problem of Bias: Can AI Be Fair Without Intent?

One of the most compelling arguments for AI is that it takes the human subjectivity out of decision-making.

If an AI-based system could substitute for human decision-makers, we believe it would be less subject to personal bias and more rational. But is it? AI is not actual in some abstract sense—it is trained on data, and data is a record of the past, a past filtered through human bias. If an AI-based hiring system rejects job applicants on the basis of past patterns of hiring, hiring patterns that mirrored upper-caste, English-speaking, top-school applicants, is it merely describing the way things are, or is it perpetuating injustice? What we too frequently forget is that data is not objective. It can be as biased as the society that generates it.

John Rawls, in his theory of justice, introduced the "veil of ignorance" as an intellectual exercise to try on fairness—one should design a system of justice in a state of ignorance of one's position in it. AI, however, has no such self-awareness; it calculates on the basis of probability and pattern, not reason. It has no capacity to question its data or the effect of its decisions. If a system cannot think, can it ever be fair? Or is fairness, by definition, a human construct which cannot be mechanised? Surveillance and Privacy: The Paradox of Freedom and Security. The moral uses of AI extend beyond decision-making to the domain of personal freedom. In indian cities, AI facial recognition is being used for policing, as a way to provide security. The Delhi Police, for instance, has used AI in its "Surveillance and Facial Recognition Project" to locate criminals and missing persons. The irony, however, is that in the name of security, AI-based surveillance has the power to destroy the very freedom that it is intended to safeguard.

Michel Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish, had conceptualised the idea of the panopticon—a prison complex in which prisoners are uncertain whether they are being watched or not, and hence police themselves. AI-based surveillance is the same idea; people change their behaviour due to the fear of being constantly under surveillance. If ethical behaviour is the product of freewill, as existentialists like Sartre would believe, does a society that disciplines virtue by algorithmic surveillance of fact enhance morality, or merely ensure obedience? When people do things not due to internalised ethics codes but due to fear of surveillance, is the product ethical behaviour, or the absence of vice by coercion? Secondly, surveillance systems can be misused. In India, where processes of protection of privacy are still in the process of being debated, the lack of meaningful regulation puts citizens at the mercy of unwarranted surveillance, and this leads to a power relationship that eliminates personal choice. The irony of AI surveillance is that in pursuing security, it has the tendency to destroy the very freedom that it is intended to safeguard.

Accountability and Moral Agency:

Can a Machine Be Responsible? A significant ethical issue of AI is likely responsibility. If a medical AI system misdiagnoses a patient or an autonomous car crashes, who is responsible? AI does not feel guilty, nor does it have intentionality—two fundamental notions of classical moral theory.

Aristotle's virtue theory relies on character and deliberation, but AI does not "deliberate"; it computes. In Indian philosophy, the karma idea implies that the action and the consequence are identical. But what if the action is done by an agent without the intention to do the action? If an AI decision harms, is it an ethical error or a design error? And if we absolve AI from responsibility, do we absolve from responsibility those who designed and implemented it? This is the crux of the responsibility problem. If an AI system harms, should the designers, the implementers, the company, or the end-user be held responsible? The lack of a good moral theory of AI leaves the door open to moral deflection: the system is blamed, and not the implementers who designed it.

The Indian legal system, and most others, struggle with these questions, as the glacial pace of AI-related legislation on AI-driven issues like autonomous cars or medical diagnosis attests. The uncertainty of responsibility opens a broader issue: As AI systems become increasingly autonomous, classical ethical theories based on human moral agency may no longer be sufficient.

Conclusion

The emergence of AI is not only a technological revolution but also a philosophical one. While Turing once asked, "Can machines think?" now we must ask, Can machines be moral? AI can simulate decision-making, but since it is not conscious or self-aware, we cannot be certain of its morality. As we embrace AI, we must confront the inherent moral questions and redefine what it means to be moral in a world that is rapidly mechanising

Author 

Vaidehi (2nd Year)