Moral Action in the New Digital Reality: Brief Reflections
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13129/3035-062X/prnr-5546Abstract
The phenomenon of artificial intelligence undoubtedly stands as a defining feature of our time, potentially capable of reshaping virtually every sphere of human activity. This disruptive technology began to assert itself just seventy years ago: the event that officially marks its inception is the conference held at Dartmouth College in 1956, organized by the young mathematician John McCarthy, who coined the expression “artificial intelligence” (Mitchell, 2019). Although this field of research has, from the outset, been characterized by a certain methodological pluralism, if not outright anarchy, AI has rapidly become a widespread and pervasive presence. Today, scholars speak of the “age of artificial intelligence” (Kissinger, Schmidt & Huttenlocher, 2023) to refer to the advent of a technology so innovative that it does not merely enhance or augment reality, but rather radically transforms it by creating new environments to inhabit and new forms of action with which to engage (Floridi, 2022). Its defining feature is that, not being designed for a single specific purpose, it fundamentally alters the way human beings carry out virtually every activity: AI, in effect, interferes with thought, knowledge, perception, and reality itself, to the point of reshaping the course of history.
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