Confucian ‘Trustworthy AI’: Diversifying a Keyword in the Ethics of AI and Governance

The term ‘trustworthy AI’ has become one of the keywords in the academic and policy discussion of the social, ethical, and legal issues of artificial intelligence (AI), but it remains a contested notion and there are open debates about its meaning and how it is to be operationalized. For philosophers and ethicists, the debate has particularly revolved around the meaning of ‘trust’ and ‘trustworthiness’. However, since a thin and acultural understanding of trust and trustworthiness has been common in the debate, the notion of trustworthy AI is at best ambiguous in a global and cross-cultural context, where trust and trustworthiness can be interpreted differently. A culturally-sensitive exploration of trust, trustworthiness, and trustworthy AI is, therefore, much needed to gain insights on what and how trustworthy AI can be conceptualised through the normative resources of other cultural traditions. This article attempts to offer a culturally sensitive exploration of trustworthy AI by drawing on recent analysis of trust and trustworthiness in Confucian philosophy. More specifically, I shall demonstrate how taking seriously the Confucian view of trust and trustworthiness in the context of AI provides us an alternative way to think about the ethics and governance of AI.