IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/buseth/v32y2023i3p1113-1122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

All about the human: A Buddhist take on AI ethics

Author

Listed:
  • Chien‐Te Lin

Abstract

As AI technology becomes more influential, ethical considerations surrounding its application are becoming increasingly relevant. In this paper, I reflect on some moral questions from a Buddhist perspective and consider the moral status of AI to evaluate its function and purpose in our lives. Since a robot lacks the capacity to experience suffering and has no conscience, AI ethics are possible only as ethics about robots and not as ethics for robots. Despite having no concrete moral status, robots cannot be deemed entirely morally insignificant as they exist as moral objects toward which moral agents have a duty. Our unique endowment as human beings is the intelligence for moral deliberation as we develop AI technologies and determine the future direction of humanity. From a Buddhist point of view, there is potential to advance our spiritual growth through the realization of the interdependence between humans and AI. As we recognize the uniqueness of our humanity and take a middle‐way approach, the rise of robots need not threaten our existence but could instead catapult humanity into a new dawn.

Suggested Citation

  • Chien‐Te Lin, 2023. "All about the human: A Buddhist take on AI ethics," Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(3), pages 1113-1122, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:buseth:v:32:y:2023:i:3:p:1113-1122
    DOI: 10.1111/beer.12547
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12547
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/beer.12547?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:buseth:v:32:y:2023:i:3:p:1113-1122. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/26946424 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.