Duty Now and for the Future: Communication, Ethics and Artificial Intelligence

ABSTRACTThis essay examines whether and to what extent the “other” in communicative interactions may be otherwise than another human subject and the moral opportunities and challenges this alteration would make available to us. Toward this end, the analysis proceeds in five steps or movements. The first reviews the way the discipline of communication has typically perceived and theorized the role and function of technology. The second and third parts investigate the critical challenges that emerging technology, such as artificial intelligence applications and robots, poses to this standard instrumentalist way of thinking. The fourth part introduces an alternative called “relational ethics,” which effectively flips the script on the usual way of proceeding. And the fifth part presents and responds to one important and notable objection to this alternative. The goal in all of this is not to complicate things but to introduce and formulate a techno-ethics that is more agile in its response to the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The logical distinction between person and thing was initially instituted and codified by the Roman jurist Gaius (130–180 CE). As Esposito (Citation2015), who arguably wrote the book on this subject, explained: “When the Roman jurist Gaius, in his Institutes, identified persons and things as the two categories that along with actions constitute the subject matter of the law, he did nothing more than give legal value to a criterion that was already widely accepted.” (p. 1–2)2 This does not mean that all things are essentially nothing outside of being relata. The thing-in-itself (to use Kantian terminology) is ontologically consistent in and of itself. The thing as it stands in relationship to another – as relata – is dependent upon the terms and conditions of the relationship. That fact does not mean (continuing with the Kantian formulation) that there is no Ding an sich. It is not nothing; it is just epistemologically inaccessible as it is in itself.3 “Face” in Levinas is not a substantive property that is possessed by an entity. It is (or takes place as) an act or event of “facing.” For more on this and its significance for interpretations and applications of Levinasian philosophy, see Silvia Benso’s (Citation2000) The Face of Things.