Category: AI Philosophy
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Can Algorithms Ever Be Truly Fair?
Imagine you’re preparing for a job interview. You check your resume, pick the right shirt, and practice your handshake. Now, consider this: before you ever enter the office, a machine-learning model has already combed through your application. It doesn’t actually shake your hand. It doesn’t notice…
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Self-Driving Cars and the Trolley Problem Debate
When it comes to autonomous vehicles—those self-driving marvels that promise to ferry us from place to place while we snooze, text, or contemplate the meaning of life—there’s one question that just won’t die. If you talk to engineers, philosophers, or practically any cab driver with time…
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Should AI Have Its Own Morality?
If you’ve ever tried to teach a toddler table manners, you start to appreciate the complexities of passing on values—even to other humans. With artificial intelligence, we have a student who learns at the speed of light but with approximately zero shared history as a fellow…
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Can We Really Trust AI’s Confident Lies?
We live in interesting times—times when you can ask your phone what the capital of Botswana is, and, within seconds, receive a confident answer (it’s Gaborone, by the way). But now that machines speak to us with a certainty often lacking at dinner-table debates, an age-old…
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Should AI Be Allowed to Lie? The Shocking Truth
Imagine you are chatting with an AI assistant. Maybe you’re asking it if your new shirt matches your shoes, or perhaps you’re discussing a problem at work. Now, imagine that—unbeknownst to you—the AI is lying to you. Not just a playful fib, but an intentional deception.…
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Befriending AI: A Human Risk or Reward?
Most people, at some point, have chatted with their phone’s virtual assistant—if only to ask for the weather or to settle a debate about the capital of Mongolia. But lately, these exchanges have become something more. So-called “AI companions” boast personalities, memories, and always-available ears. As…
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Is AI Killing True Creativity?
If you’ve been anywhere near a screen in the last few years, you’ve seen it: a flurry of images, poetry, stories, and even music, all purportedly “created” by artificial intelligence. At first, it was fun—imagine your cat dressed as a Renaissance knight riding a bicycle through…
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When Machines Decide Who Lives or Dies
Picture this: A trolley barrels towards five unsuspecting workers on a track. You stand by a lever. If you pull it, the trolley diverts to another track—where it will endanger just one person. This is, of course, the Trolley Problem, philosophy’s favorite ethical exercise and perhaps…
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Should AI Get Credit as Artist?
If a tree falls in a forest and a robot writes a poem about it, who gets credit—the tree, the robot, or the human who built the robot? This is not just a whimsical question for philosophers with too much time on their hands. As artificial…
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Whose Values Will AI Really Serve?
Imagine, for a moment, that you’ve been assigned to build the world’s most sophisticated waiter. It takes your order, serves your food, never spills the wine, and is endlessly polite. Now, suppose a table of a thousand people, each with their own customs and beliefs, begins…