Keynote D Abstract

Language, Consciousness, Justice, and AI Regulation

Joanna Bryson

Professor of Ethics & Technology

Centre for Digital Governance

Hertie School, Berlin

16.00–17.15, 65 Dec 2023

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence presents at least parts of humanity with a previously-unafforded opportunity to physically dissect aspects of our nature. We replicate some but not others of our abilities in silicon and other materials, and we do so by design. This dissection offers an opportunity to better understand essential components of not only intelligence, but moral subjectivity.  Yet this experiment is largely being carried out at a titanic scale with commercial products that warp at least one of the foundations of our sociality: communication. We are provided with lightspeed access to the minds of others as well as the computation of devices.

In this talk I argue that no isolated aspect of our computational capacities makes us moral subjects. Rather, justice is an explicit coordination system used to regulate (perpetuate) a society of peers. This conjecture has direct consequences for how we should both conceptualise and regulate artificial intelligence.