In the midst of the technological revolution in which society continues to live and grow through, new developments like virtual reality and artificial intelligence have come to the forefront to give insight and ease of access to a completely different kind of world. Artificial intelligence, however, has been said to impact the cognitive processes and decision-making capabilities of humans. As technology grows and people become more reliant on it, humans are removed from the process of critical thinking and decision making, which will inevitably affect human welfare. Businesses are under threat from new arrivals and new technologies, but harnessing too much of artificial intelligence can have a greatly negative impact.
It is imperative that ethical consideration is built into artificial intelligence architecture and technology. Artificial intelligence techniques are impacting the business world already, enriching and expanding decision-making capabilities and decision-making support by anticipating the needs of the user, providing the best of information available and suggesting a course of action from there (Phillips-Wren & Jain). A consequentialist theorist would only look at the consequences of an action to determine whether the action is right or wrong. This viewpoint posits that an action is morally correct if it leads to a situation that was better than the situations before the action. From the consequentialist perspective, the “intelligence explosion” of the 21st century will inevitably make technology more useful and more powerful than humans to the extent that it may become uncontrollable, even to the point of total human extinction.
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While the consequentialist view makes the presence of artificial intelligence and its capabilities a threat to human like, philosopher Nick Bostrom asserts, AI can also assist in helping human minds solve difficult problems such as poverty, disease, income inequality and environmental destruction, as well as allowing them to “enhance” the human mind and body. With other artificial intelligence methods such as self-driving cars, which have found to have fewer benefits by way of being an alternative to human driven cars, I believe that with an increase in such, it can make humans not only more dependent, but less skills and losing touch with humanity. It is easy to depend on technology as an agent, but it removes the natural autonomy from the human individual. The extremity of the thought of human extinction is just that—extreme. Humans will not die out, but there is a possibility of a future where technology will be expected to mimic humans and those being born into new I developments will not know the skills of human decision-making and critical thinking because of the propensity to use technology to do even the most mundane things. There is, however, a silver lining in wanting humans to use and collaborate with artificial intelligence systems, especially since a great number of people see technology as foolproof, despite its own proven errors.
From a consequentialist viewpoint, it is my hope that artificial intelligence continues to remain a complement to human capabilities and not a replacement or primary choice. Humans are complex in ways that technology is not and vice versa. Humans are driven by hard to program logic and emotional-decision making, which has to be artificially created for AI. In terms of the business world, corporations are responsible for not measuring cognitive computing by the ability of the technology to act like humans and instead measure it in more pragmatic ways that contribute to effectiveness, ease of use, innovation and opportunities for growth. The bottom line and the rush to be disruptive with all the information in the world at hand is not better or more important that a business’ organic growth and the utility of the human capital that drives the business itself.
