Transhumanism: What Does It Mean To Be A Machine Ethical?

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The world around us is shaped by technology. The evolution of human civilization may be attributed more to the advancement in technology than to any other aspect. And today humanity stands essentially at the verge of transcending on to next level, through the persistent exponential development in genetics, cyber-technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology and other related technologies. Transhumanism, that may be called a more moderate version of posthumanism, is defined as extension of humanism that does not limit itself to the traditional humanist methods, in order to improve the condition of human species. According to transhuman definition, to be human is to understand and try to overcome your own limitations and redefine yourself constantly …show more content…

Moor in his research paper. It is noticeable that we might evaluate computing technology values, but all values aren’t ethical. Technological values can be drawn upon practical, economic, and aesthetic values, which aren’t necessarily ethical. Machine ethics, in broad sense, are close to what is commonly called computer ethics. Constraining a machine’s actions to avoid unethical outcomes makes the machines ‘implicit ethical agents’. Limitation of this approach is the fact that it makes machines very task specific, throwing out the learning-curve from the scenario; and at certain stage of evolution of machine, it is very possible that such constraining ways will be thrown away by the AI machines themselves. A machine that has the ability to make plausible ethical judgments and justify them would be an explicit ethical agent. As mentioned in James’s paper, Anderson, Anderson and Armen’s model of ethical agent uses a learning algorithm to adjust judgement of duty by taking into account both prima facia duties and the past intuitions about similar or dissimilar cases involving those duties. Considering that an average adult human is a full ethical agent, capable of making explicit ethical judgement and competent to reasonably justify them, strong basis of powerful machine ethics is what is needed before machines be forwarded into …show more content…

We want them to built together with us a global society on earth, or wherever we go together in space, that is respectful of human values and of human individuals. Only way to do that is to start with the right steps. That’s why we need to take on the challenge of understanding how we can create an infrastructure and a superstructure that incorporates moral and ethical thinking into our devices. We cannot postpone that. Thinking about sun, moon and stars in scientific terms until a few centuries ago was blasphemy. Same way, for a lot of people, thinking about ethics and morals in scientific terms is blasphemy. But whatever be the case, we really need science of morals and engineering of morals. Because if we do not take this challenge of understanding scientific morality an incorporating it in our devices, the evolution of autonomous machines will proceed with disregard to human wellness and to objectives and respect of

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