The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI (Oxford Handbooks)

by Markus D. Dubber

the realization of a fully conscious individual nonbiological system—is that such an entity must entail embodiment, so that it can experience the world phenomenologically and therefore understand its emplacement within environments. This has seemed an insuperable barrier to many philosophers, since the deployment of a body appears to be beyond the technological capacities of AI systems. Once again, though, the assumptions here are revealed as tenuous, if not outright invalid, and based upon allegedly baseline behavior that is everywhere changing under existing technological conditions. Yes, most human agents have bodies that move through the world, exercising the basic physical sensorium to gather, collate, and filter external stimuli for internal purposes. A sense of emplacement remains an important dimension of human phenomenology, as do the sense-based experiences of seeing, hearing, tasting, and feeling. Without sunsets, symphonies, good meals, and relational intimacy, the world is a dry place for humans. But this norm admits of many exceptions: there are many human agents with less than optimal sensory or ambulatory ability, for example. I am myself deaf in one ear, which deprives me of some experiences without challenging my sense of self. I also can’t run or jump the way I used to—who can? Even more significantly, there are many extensions of personhood achieved precisely with nonphysical stimuli: online interactions, media immersion, disembodied tracing, and so on....