The AI-design regress

Philosophical Studies 182 (1):229-255 (2025)
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Abstract

How should we design AI systems that make moral decisions that affect us? When there is disagreement about which moral decisions should be made and which methods would produce them, we should avoid arbitrary design choices. However, I show that this leads to a regress problem similar to the one metanormativists face involving higher orders of uncertainty. I argue that existing strategies for handling this parallel problem give verdicts about where to stop in the regress that are either too arbitrary or too difficult to implement. I propose a new strategy for AI designers that is better than these alternatives.

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Pamela Robinson
University of British Columbia, Okanagan

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References found in this work

Rationality’s Fixed Point.Michael G. Titelbaum - 2015 - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 5.
Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Alignment.Iason Gabriel - 2020 - Minds and Machines 30 (3):411-437.
Running risks morally.Brian Weatherson - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (1):141-163.

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