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Digital Philosophy

Ethics for the Age of AI

Mahmoud Khatami asks, can machines make good moral decisions?

Imagine a self-driving car speeding down a narrow road when suddenly a child runs into its path. The car must decide: swerve and risk the passenger’s life, or stay the course and endanger the child? This real-world dilemma echoes the classic ‘trolley problem’ in ethics, and highlights the ethical challenges of AI. Similarly, AI systems in healthcare diagnose diseases and recommend treatments, sometimes making life-or-death decisions. But can machines truly understand right from wrong? What happens when they make mistakes, or reflect their creators' biases? As AI integrates into our lives, it will both transform how we work and challenge our understanding of morality. From facial recognition to loan approvals, AI makes decisions once reserved for humans; yet machines lack empathy, context, or moral reasoning.

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