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Artificial Intelligence, Ethics of

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

Introduction: Why Artificial Intelligence Raises Ethical Questions

The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) predates the introduction of the term “artificial intelligence.” Moreover, the observation that AI raises ethical and social questions predates the current development of the field of AI ethics. Notably, the ancient Greeks already imagined animated instruments that could take over the work they thought human slaves were needed for. They even reflected on what the introduction of artificial intelligence might mean for human society – as is shown in a well-known quote from Aristotle’s Politics, in which Aristotle says that “if each instrument could do its own work, at the word of command, or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus […] managers would not need subordinates and masters would not need slaves” (Aristotle 1996: 15). When Alan Turing later wrote his famous essays in the early 1950s, he discussed whether machines can think...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Sven Nyholm

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  1. Sven Nyholm
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Correspondence to Sven Nyholm .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Norbert Paulo

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Nyholm, S. (2023). Artificial Intelligence, Ethics of. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1093-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1093-1

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