The Ethos of Artificial Intelligence: Using AI to Promote the Good Life While Avoiding Harm

The public debut of ChatGPT was a watershed moment. It awakened us to the fact that artificial intelligence—a technology that had long been a source of fantasy and fiction—was finally here and operating among us. For the first time in history, ordinary people could converse directly with an AI chatbot. The thrill of this 'first encounter' with artificial intelligence, coupled with the astonishing capabilities that AI chatbots displayed, gave rise to concerns about whether AI was sentient or self-aware. Although we have been using AI-assisted applications for years in such forms as facial recognition and language translation, our encounters with AI chatbots stoked our imaginations in ways that these earlier applications did not. Why do we suddenly feel threatened by artificial intelligence?The news is filled with warnings that artificial intelligence may ultimately doom humanity. The ethos of the tech leaders who are unleashing AI is questionable. How can we take advantage of powerful new AI capabilities to promote the good life' and avoid being harmed? What are the real risks of AI? This book offers some crucial public guidance for the safe use of AI. It seeks to clarify common misconceptions about the 'nature' of AI and recommends ethical guardrails that will help us to use AI wisely and in a way that benefits humankind.This work is not meant to be a technical explanation of artificial intelligence Large Language Models (LLMs) or a definitive guide to the ethics of AI. It is a look at the ethos of the AI community with a survey of global principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence. The authors review global best practices for living with AI along with practical suggestions for regulating artificial intelligence applications. Read more