This chapter focuses on the development and use of “narrow” AI technologies designed for professional decision support in high stakes technoscientific domains (i.e., aviation, healthcare, engineering of hazardous infrastructure). We examine these forms of AI as epistemic technologies, which call on us to grapple with the relation between human and nonhuman in epistemic reasoning, matters of epistemic trust, and responsibility in both forward- and backward-looking senses. We articulate four areas of particular concern, including the challenge that moral distancing poses to ethical decision making, the limitations of models in accounting for rare events, how users can become overly reliant and uncritical in their evaluation of AI outputs for reasons of human cognition as well as their work pressures, and lastly the critical role that AI whistleblowers play in ensuring ethical protections. We argue that we need to be thinking of AI ethics in practice not only as operationalized principles as others have called for, but as grounded in the decision making moment. The goal must be to see not only what AI can or cannot do, but what professionals do currently and must continue to do, and how AI may or may not help with that.

错误:搜索内容不能为空,请输入英文关键词
错误:关键词超出字数限制,请精简
高级检索

AI as an Epistemic Technology: Navigating Ethics in Practice in Cases of Distributed Decision Making

  • Sarah Maslen,
  • Jan Hayes

摘要

This chapter focuses on the development and use of “narrow” AI technologies designed for professional decision support in high stakes technoscientific domains (i.e., aviation, healthcare, engineering of hazardous infrastructure). We examine these forms of AI as epistemic technologies, which call on us to grapple with the relation between human and nonhuman in epistemic reasoning, matters of epistemic trust, and responsibility in both forward- and backward-looking senses. We articulate four areas of particular concern, including the challenge that moral distancing poses to ethical decision making, the limitations of models in accounting for rare events, how users can become overly reliant and uncritical in their evaluation of AI outputs for reasons of human cognition as well as their work pressures, and lastly the critical role that AI whistleblowers play in ensuring ethical protections. We argue that we need to be thinking of AI ethics in practice not only as operationalized principles as others have called for, but as grounded in the decision making moment. The goal must be to see not only what AI can or cannot do, but what professionals do currently and must continue to do, and how AI may or may not help with that.