John Lennox: Artificial intelligence and morality

WE have seen that AI, like any new technology only perhaps more so, brings with it a whole new raft of moral considerations that may easily seem unsurmountable. For AI computer systems have no conscience, and so the morality of any decisions they make will reflect the morality of the computer programmers - and that is where the difficulties start. How can we be sure that the programmers will build in a morality that is benevolent and humane? Rosalind Picard, director of the Affective Computing Group at MIT, puts it succinctly: "The greater the freedom of a machine, the more it will need moral standards." Political scientist and author of The End of History Francis Fukuyama regards transhumanism as "the world's most dangerous idea" in that it runs the risk of affecting human rights.