Episode
Nikola Danaylov: It’s Ethics. Not Tech Ethics
- Podcast
- Singularity.FM
- Published
- Mar 8, 2024
- Duration seconds
- 524
- Processing state
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- https://soundcloud.com/singularity1on1/tech-ethics
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Summary
I have noticed that almost every startup in almost every industry is claiming “a revolutionary AI or blockchain breakthrough.” [Often both.] More recently I’m flabbergasted to see a similar fad in the growing number of self-proclaimed Tech and AI ethicists. We apparently have an exponential proliferation of what someone called “ethics natives” such as angel investor ethicists, venture capital ethicists, startup ethicists, bitcoin ethicists, blockchain ethicists, unicorn ethicists, AI ethicists, design ethicists, IPO ethicists, etc. Here is the thing: At the end of the day, there is really no such thing as tech ethics. Just like there is no angel investor, venture capital, startup, blockchain, or IPO ethics. There is, really, only ethics. And bullshit ethics. Yes, you can name legitimate examples of branching off such as bioethics. But the reason why they are subdisciplines of ethics is the recognition that there are some overarching principles or an overriding framework that comes first and is primary. It is only then that we have the specific context of medicine, technology, or anything else you’d like to consider. Yes, context is important but it is always secondary because ethics is the context-independent universal foundation or framework which allows you to evaluate any particular and unique problem in ethical terms. So, if you don’t have the foundation that gives meaning, contextual considerations are useless, perhaps damaging. And to the degree that we have made progress in fields such as bioethics, it is because we started with a very strong foundation in ethics. But most AI or Tech “ethicists” can’t even define what ethics is. Even worse – many of them “teach” ethics by starting with the trolley dilemma, euthanasia, abortion, human enhancement, genetic manipul…