Artificial Phronēsis

John Sullins 
Sonoma State University

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

Artificial Phronēsis (AP) claims that phronēsis, or practical wisdom, plays a primary role in high level moral reasoning and further asks the question of whether or not a functional equivalent to phronēsis is something that can be programmed into machines.  The theory is agnostic on the eventuality of machines ever achieving this ability but it does claim that achieving AP is necessary for machines to be human equivalent moral agents.  AP is not an attempt to fully describe the phronēsis described in classical ethics. AP is not attempting to derive a full account of phronēsis in humans either at the theoretical or neurological level.  AP is not a claim that machines can become perfect moral agents.  Instead AP is an attempt to describe an intentionally designed computational system that interacts ethically with human and artificial agents even in novel situations that require creative solutions.  AP is to be achieved across multiple modalities and most likely in an evolutionary fashion.  AP acknowledges that machines may only be able to simulate ethical judgement for sometime and that the danger of creating a seemingly ethical simulacrum is ever present.  This means that AP sets a very high bar to judge machine ethical reasoning and behavior against.  It is an ultimate goal but real systems will fall far short of this goal for the foreseeable future.

John P. Sullins is a full professor of philosophy at Sonoma State University. He has numerous publications on the ethics of autonomous weapons systems, self-driving cars, personal robotics, affective robotics, malware ethics, and the philosophy and ethics of information technologies as well as the design of autonomous ethical agents.