Artificial Intelligence: A Civilizational Challenge, A Generational Duty

by Geneviève Fieux-Castagneti and Gérald Santucci: The complexity of defining the concept of “ethics” and the wide variety of its interpretations across the world make it unlikely that a global consensus on how to implement it in the design of new systems will be reached in the near future. What we observe today about AI ethics is a growing concern in several countries (e.g., Australia, EU, India), a lack of interest among others (e.g., China, Japan), and where ethics is being studied a striking difference in how to tackle the challenge (e.g., designing hard or soft regulation within the EU, finding an appropriate balance between ethics and economic interests in the US). The differences between regions of the world are rooted in their historical relationships to creativity and innovation – they are therefore cultural and stable over time. The risk is to have a variety of ethical guidelines with different principles, or interpretations of these principles, and different ways to design, implement and enforce them.