Artificial Intelligence, Personal Decisions, Consent, and the Confucian Idea of Oneness

The pervasiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has brought forth a new background condition labeled by the author as “the interconnectedness condition”, where every individual is tightly and seamlessly interconnected. In this chapter, the author shows that personal decision-making and consent have acquired new moral significance due to the changing moral character of these acts in the interconnectedness condition. In particular, he argues that personal decision-making and consent are transformed from self-regarding acts to other-regarding acts, and that the transformation introduces a new moral responsibility for individuals qua users AI systems to account for others’ values and interests in making personal decisions and giving consent. However, the author also admits that the new responsibility can be difficult for Western ethics and political philosophy to understand and accept. Accordingly, he turns to the Confucian idea of oneness to make sense of the new responsibility in the interconnectedness condition.