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Can Artificial Intelligence Lead Us to Genuine Virtue? A Confucian Perspective

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Abstract

Philosophers, technologists, and pundits are beginning to recognize the deep ethical questions raised by artificial intelligence. So far, attention has concentrated in three areas: (1) how we are being damaged or controlled by profit-driven algorithms (“the attention economy”), and what to do about it; (2) how to ensure that autonomous, intelligent machines (like driverless vehicles) make “good” decisions, and how to define what these decisions are; and (3) how to think about (and perhaps resist) the possibility of artificial superintelligence surpassing and perhaps controlling us. To the extent that theorists have looked at the good that AI can bring, they have tended focus on possibilities for material abundance and leisure. In addition, virtually all of this theorizing to-date has been limited to Western ethical frameworks. Especially given the huge investments in AI presently being made in China, it seems prudent to expand our collective philosophical frameworks to encompass a more global set of ethical perspectives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Nilsson (2010, p. p. 13).

  2. 2.

    The account is set out in his Treatise of Human Nature (Hume 1978). It does not appear explicitly in his later Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Hume 1965a), leading some to suggest that he abandoned it. However, as pointed out by David Wiggins, the distinction “is there in the background” of the Enquiry (Wiggins 1996, p. p. 135) and is explicit in Hume’s still later essay “Of the Original Contract” (Hume 1965b, p. 267).

  3. 3.

    Cohon (2006, p. 259).

  4. 4.

    Taylor (1998) emphasizes the transformation of instinct that takes place even in the natural virtues, and therefore suggests that other scholars have sometimes overemphasized the distinction between natural and artificial virtues.

  5. 5.

    Cohon (2006, p. 260).

  6. 6.

    Hume (1978, p. 575) and see generally ibid., §3.1.1.

  7. 7.

    Cohon (2006, p. 263) and Taylor (1998).

  8. 8.

    For an overview of the debates and extensive references, see Angle (2013).

  9. 9.

    Zhu (1997, p. 778).

  10. 10.

    Wang (1992, p. 1168).

  11. 11.

    See the helpful discussion of “selfish” versus “self-centered” in Liu (2017), and more generally see Angle and Tiwald (2017) on the importance of being “centered.”

  12. 12.

    It is common for Confucians to say that humaneness has both a specific and a more general meaning, with the general meaning being tantamount to “virtue” itself: in this sense, one who is humane has all of the virtues. In this essay I will concentrate on the specific meaning as defined in the main text. For more discussion, see Angle and Tiwald (2017, ch. 8).

  13. 13.

    Mengzi 2A:6.

  14. 14.

    Mengzi 1A:7.

  15. 15.

    See Mengzi 7B:31, which begins: “All men have some things which they cannot bear; extend that feeling to what they can bear, and humaneness will be the result.” In other words, while none of us can bear the thought of a baby falling into a well—and thus will be moved to compassion in such a case—there are too many things that we can bear, such as the suffering of distant strangers. Real humaneness results when our “inability to bear” suffering applies even to these more distant cases.

  16. 16.

    Markoff (2017).

  17. 17.

    See Muoio (2015) for a brief account. Perhaps surprisingly, the potential for robots to play a role in elder care does not receive any specific attention in the most sustained treatment of Japanese theory and practice related to robots (Robertson 2018).

  18. 18.

    Tufekci (2014), cited in Markoff (2017).

  19. 19.

    Markoff (2017).

  20. 20.

    Analects 2:7.

  21. 21.

    Analects 2:8.

  22. 22.

    Analects 4:19.

  23. 23.

    See Mengzi 7A:35.

  24. 24.

    Van Norden (2007, p. 258).

  25. 25.

    Van Norden (2007, pp. 259–260).

  26. 26.

    Analects 2:3.

  27. 27.

    See Van Norden (2007, pp. 270–272), Olberding (2007), and Angle (2012, ch. 6).

  28. 28.

    Van Norden (2007, p. 275).

  29. 29.

    See Mengzi 2A:6, Geaney (2002), and Angle and Tiwald (2017, ch. 6).

  30. 30.

    De Botton (2015). In the present essay I only scratch the surface of the intriguing ideas presented in De Botton’s brief but provocative report.

  31. 31.

    Mengzi 7B:24 and Angle and Tiwald (2017, ch. 2).

  32. 32.

    See Angle and Tiwald (2017, pp. 162–163).

  33. 33.

    Heller (2017).

  34. 34.

    Heller (2017).

  35. 35.

    Analects 12:7.

  36. 36.

    Mencius 7A:21.

  37. 37.

    Edward Slingerland gives a fascinating analysis of this process in the language of cognitive science, saying that the body language of someone in a “flow state,” when their “cognitive control systems are down-regulated,” is indeed distinctive and a sign of genuine commitment (Slingerland 2014).

  38. 38.

    This kind of challenge is raised in William (2017).

  39. 39.

    See https://www.allstate.com/drive-wise.aspx. Various systems of private or public “social credit” monitoring have also been discussed in contemporary China.

  40. 40.

    Angle and Tiwald (2017, pp. 139–140).

  41. 41.

    Xunzi, “Li Lun Pian.”

  42. 42.

    Xunzi, “Quan Xue Pian.”

  43. 43.

    See, for example, Slingerland (2011) and Mower (2013). Snow (2010) does not discuss Confucianism but it also fits well with my perspective here.

  44. 44.

    This issue was called to my attention by Gaby Parke, who explores it in Parke (2017).

  45. 45.

    I am thinking, for example, of the Korean “Horak” debate; see Kim (2015) for helpful discussion.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Gaby Parke (Wesleyan ’18) for many conversations about the questions treated in this essay, which is closely related to the subject of her own Senior Essay (Parke 2017). I also am thankful for the stimulating comments on earlier versions of this material by participants at the 2018 Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought and at the 2019 Berggruen workshop “Artificial Intelligence Meets Chinese Philosophers.”

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  1. Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA

    Stephen C. Angle

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  1. Berggruen Research Center, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Bing Song

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Angle, S.C. (2021). Can Artificial Intelligence Lead Us to Genuine Virtue? A Confucian Perspective. In: Song, B. (eds) Intelligence and Wisdom. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2309-7_4

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