The Realist Perspective on Cross-Cultural AI Ethics

This chapter argues that ethical idealism needs to be complemented by political realism (using both terms in a loosely descriptive sense) and, that in the contemporary engineered and engineering world, where AI promises to play an increasingly consequential role on the global stage, by international relations realism. The provocation begins with an interpretation of the ethics-politics relationship in Aristotle, continues with a summary of John Mearsheimer’s realist theory of international relations politics, and concludes with critical commentary on the inadequacy of rules based international relations theory.