Artificial Intelligence Is No Match for Human Stupidity: Ethical Reflections on Avatars and Agents

What should our ethical concerns be in a future with ‘Artificially Intelligent’ agents?

The zeitgeist of AI agents often envisions a future encompassing a hyper intelligent singularity. In this worldview, AI “monsters” appear very separate from us as, abstracted, ethically ungrounded omnipotent overlords. A world of superintelligences that have moved beyond our comprehension, with no ethical restraint.

In this polemic, I explore a different future. I discount the ‘Robopocalypse’ initially depicted in Science Fiction. Instead, I examine how realistic digital humans do pose a very real and different ethical dilemma, as we assume intelligence based on their appearance, leading to an abdication of responsibility.

I phenomenologically explore the future of realistic digital agents and avatars, and ask: what does this human-like form say about us? How will we judge ourselves when the computer, looks like us? I argue that the singularity is unlikely and thus the primary ethical concern is not some superhuman AI intelligence, but in how we, ourselves, treat these digital humans.