Philosophical discussion on ethical frameworks for AGI development

12.5 Clarifying the Ethics of Justice: Extending the Golden Rule in to a Multifactorial Ethical Model 223 On the other hand, logical coherence and the categorical imperative (imperatives 5 and 4) are matters for the formal stage of cognitive development, which come along only with the mature approach to ethics. These come from abstracting ethics beyond direct experience and manipulating them abstractly and formally — a stage which has the potential for more deeply and broadly ethical behavior, but also for more complicated ethical perversions (it is the mature capability for formal ethical reasoning that is able to produce ungrounded abstractions such as “I’m torturing you for your own good”). Developmentally, we suggest that once the capabil- ity for formal reasoning matures, the categorical imperative and the quest for logical ethical coherence naturally emerge, and the sophisticated combination of inferential and simulative cognition embodied in an appropriate social context then result in the emergence of the various characteristics typifying the mature ethical stage. Finally, it seems that one key aspect of the passage from the mature to the enlightened stage of ethics is the penetration of these two final imperatives more and more deeply into the judging mind itself. The reflexive stage of cognitive development is in part about seeking a deep logical coherence between the aspects of one’s own mind, and making reasoned modifications to one’s mind so as to improve the level of coherence. And, much of the process of mental discipline and purification that comes with the passage to enlightened ethics has to do with the application of the categorical imperative to one’s own thoughts and feelings — i.e. making a true inner systematic effort to think and feel only those things one judges are actually generally good and right to be thinking and feeling. Applying these principles internally appears critical for effectively applying them externally, for reasons that are doubtlessly bound up with the inter- penetration of internal and external reality within the thinking mind, and for the “distributed cognition” phenomenon wherein individual mind is itself an approximative abstraction to the reality in which each individual’s mind is pragmatically extended across their social group and their environment [Hut95]. Obviously, these are complex issues and we’re not posing the exploratory discussion given here as conclusive in any sense. But what seems generally clear from this line of thinking is that the complex balance between the multiple factors involved in AGI ethics, shifts during a system’s development. If you did CEV, CAV or CBV among five year old humans, ten year old humans, or adult humans, you would get different results. Probably you'd also get different results from senior citizens! The way the factors are balanced depends on the mind’s cognitive and emotional stage of development. 12.5.2 The Need for Context-Sensitivity and Adaptiveness in Deploying Ethical Principles As well as depending on developmental stage, there is also an obvious and dramatic context- sensitivity involved here — both in calculating the fulfillment of abstract ethical imperatives, and in balancing various imperatives against each other. As an example, consider the simple Asimovian maxim “T will not harm humans,” which may be seen to follow from the Golden Rule for any agent that doesn’t itself want to be harmed, and that considers humans as valid agents on the same ethical level as itself. A more serious attempt to formulate this as an ethical maxim might look something like HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013139