Starting with a brief overall global view of wisdom, the peculiar knowledge, shared by gods and humans stretching through ancient times to the present from East to West incorporating sacred texts from Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and other Indigenous religions and cultures, including of course the ancient religion and myths of Rome and Greece, the book’s main focus is the examination and normative evaluation of the impact AI technology has on our well-being now and potentially in the future. The key question is what is technology good for and specifically artificial intelligence (AI) technology? This book is motivated by the need to answer that question by examining the impact AI technology (henceforth technology) has on human well-being, through the notion of Wisdom. For in the absence of any tangible or potential eudaimonic benefit for society on our collective well-being, what is technology good for, especially in cases where the eudaimonic impact of technology on society is not only very negligible but harmful? To answer that question, the book develops and applies a meta-normative model of wisdom whose primary purpose is to determine the essential conditions that any normative theory that seeks to assess the impact of technology on well-being must adequately address in order to be able to account for, explain and evaluate the capability of any technological product or process in its design and/or its use to contribute in some way, if any, to the good life for the well-being of individuals and society generally. Using a theoretical normative tripartite model of Wisdom, the Dual Obligation Information Theory-Wisdom (DOIT-Wisdom) (Spence, Information, knowledge and wisdom: groundwork for the normative evaluation of digital information and its relation to the good life. Ethics Inf Technol 13, 261–275, 2011) that comprises three inter-related normative components, the epistemic, ethical and the eudaimonic, within an overarching conceptual framework, this book examines the actual and potential impact of AI technology on well-being. For example, information and communication technology (ICT) and AI technologies that do not protect the justified autonomy and privacy rights of its users or allow and do not restrict the indiscriminate dissemination of misinformation and disinformation, as well as the indiscriminate harvesting of user’s information for the primary gain of Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google, would have a low and negative capability for well-being. As such, it would potentially generate a negative epistemic, ethical and eudaimonic impact for its users and generally, a negative impact on society and the global community overall and therefore would not be wise to use such technologies.

Introduction

章节
发表日期：

2025年

查看全文

Edward H. Spence

摘要

Starting with a brief overall global view of wisdom, the peculiar knowledge, shared by gods and humans stretching through ancient times to the present from East to West incorporating sacred texts from Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and other Indigenous religions and cultures, including of course the ancient religion and myths of Rome and Greece, the book’s main focus is the examination and normative evaluation of the impact AI technology has on our well-being now and potentially in the future. The key question is what is technology good for and specifically artificial intelligence (AI) technology? This book is motivated by the need to answer that question by examining the impact AI technology (henceforth technology) has on human well-being, through the notion of Wisdom. For in the absence of any tangible or potential eudaimonic benefit for society on our collective well-being, what is technology good for, especially in cases where the eudaimonic impact of technology on society is not only very negligible but harmful? To answer that question, the book develops and applies a meta-normative model of wisdom whose primary purpose is to determine the essential conditions that any normative theory that seeks to assess the impact of technology on well-being must adequately address in order to be able to account for, explain and evaluate the capability of any technological product or process in its design and/or its use to contribute in some way, if any, to the good life for the well-being of individuals and society generally. Using a theoretical normative tripartite model of Wisdom, the Dual Obligation Information Theory-Wisdom (DOIT-Wisdom) (Spence, Information, knowledge and wisdom: groundwork for the normative evaluation of digital information and its relation to the good life. Ethics Inf Technol 13, 261–275, 2011) that comprises three inter-related normative components, the epistemic, ethical and the eudaimonic, within an overarching conceptual framework, this book examines the actual and potential impact of AI technology on well-being. For example, information and communication technology (ICT) and AI technologies that do not protect the justified autonomy and privacy rights of its users or allow and do not restrict the indiscriminate dissemination of misinformation and disinformation, as well as the indiscriminate harvesting of user’s information for the primary gain of Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google, would have a low and negative capability for well-being. As such, it would potentially generate a negative epistemic, ethical and eudaimonic impact for its users and generally, a negative impact on society and the global community overall and therefore would not be wise to use such technologies.