Onward for the freedom of others: Marching beyond the AI Ethics

The debate on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence brought together different stakeholders including but not limited to academics, policymakers, CEOs, activists, workers’ representatives, lobbyists, journalists, and ‘moral machines’. Prominent political institutions crafted principles for the ‘ethical being’ of the AI companies while tech giants were documenting ethics in a series of self-written guidelines. In parallel, a large community started to flourish, focusing on how to technically embed ethical parameters into algorithmic systems. Founded upon the philosophical work of Simone de Beauvoir and JeanPaul Sartre, this paper explores the philosophical antinomies of the ‘AI Ethics’ debate as well as the conceptual disorientation of the ‘fairness discussion’. By bringing the philosophy of existentialism to the dialogue, this paper attempts to challenge the dialectical monopoly of utilitarianism and sheds fresh light on the -already glaring- AI arena. Why is ‘the AI Ethics guidelines’ a futile battle doomed to dangerous abstraction? How this battle can harm our sense of collective freedom? Which is the uncomfortable reality that remains obscured by the smokegas of the ‘AI Ethics’ discussion? And eventually, what’s the alternative? There seems to be a different pathway for discussing and implementing ethics; A pathway that sets the freedom of others at the epicenter of the battle for a sustainable and open to all future.