The Ethical Challenges Presented By Artificial Intelligence and Enhanced Beings

 by Juliette Franks

In the future, we can only assume that everything will be different, all elements of life such as travel, jobs, technology and medicine will have advanced beyond our comprehension. I’m going to speak about the social side of changes caused by embedded technology in humans, and how this might lead to discrimination. In the future, the Homo sapiens may not be the only advanced being on the planet. Beings like robots, AI and enhanced beings could all become a very imminent part of our reality. With technologically enhanced beings, there could be discrimination against the people who don’t have enough money to buy these enhancements, and they might be treated as a lower class citizen. 

Let’s assume that enhanced humans have the ability to access all available information on the internet in their head, it would increase knowledge massively and would change everything. They would also be able to install, if they have the money, increased processing power, which would mean the human brain would become much quicker and similar to a computer, we would be able to read and analyse a huge text in seconds.

It would change intelligence as we know it, because the smartest people would be the ones with the fastest, newest, best enhancement. Education would become very different, the un-enhanced would never be able to keep up to the others. At the moment most people can follow their dreams and do what they want if they work for it, but in this new futuristic situation jobs would be given to the more enhanced beings, the automatically smarter ones. The unenhanced would be stuck at the bottom, not able to get the same education experience, and then not able to get a job, so can’t afford enhancements that would make their lives so much easier. The poor would only get more poor and the rich would just get richer. In 2016 only 59% of students accepted into Oxford were from state schools, yet 93% of children are educated in state schools. In today's world, the children who are lucky enough to get a private education tend to perform better in exams, go to better universities and earn more throughout their careers. This doesn’t mean that they are more intelligent, only that their parents have invested in giving them the step up that a private education provides. Unenhanced beings in the future would have a very different experience compared to enhanced because their education would not be as good. Or would this discrimination become more similar to racism in the USA in the 1950s, where the unenhanced of the future would have to give up their seats on a bus for the more ‘important’ beings, or go to separate bathrooms, schools and places of worship?

When thinking about this problem, we have to discuss how it might change and be resolved. Would it be similar to issues we have faced before and are facing, with protests and the use of social media to spread awareness? Or would it change in a completely different way? When President Johnson of the USA signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 he said ‘Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined’, showing just how long it took for this to become a law, yet there are still many reports of discrimination in our current world. How long would it take for something similar to become a law in the future? How long would it take before people start standing up for themselves? Protesting and complaining and wanting fair treatment and enhancements for everyone. How would the enhanced react to this? The enhancements might eventually be seen as a necessary item for humans to have and to be without it would be impossible, so would everyone have one from birth and how would that work if someone’s was broken and they needed it fixed, would there be a service like the NHS for technological enhanced beings.

In conclusion, unenhanced beings would face a huge amount of discrimination and prejudices for their whole life if a situation like this were to become a reality. They would find it more difficult to find a job and to get a good education. Enhancements may become a necessary part of our society and the next question we must ask ourselves is how should enhancements be regulated, and how would we minimise discrimination? 

And then we have the question of consciousness. What is considered a conscious being, and how would we respect that? Would it be considered murder to shut down an AI? Then what happens when the enhanced become more computer than human? This would affect the way the world works hugely, so many different laws would have to be put in place to deal with these changes. However we have no idea if there will be a stable government or laws. Maybe in a similar way to the movie ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ an AI or an enhanced will try to gain power over the world because it thinks that it is the smartest being. The problem in the movie is that the AI doesn’t understand life, and has no intention of sustaining it on earth. Would the enhanced become similar to that, only wanting to keep those who are similar to them and just getting rid of the unenhanced? Or would AI have a real understanding of life and consciousness and then how would we deal with that, would we feel guilty if we shut it down?