How Kant’s Ethics can shape AI Alignment

Oluwaseun Sanwoolu
University of Kansas

Stevenson 1300
12:00 PM

What would it mean to align AI systems with Kant’s moral theory if they can’t be moral agents like humans? I argue that it is still possible. The first challenge is that Kant’s ideas are built for moral agents, but in the view I defend,  AI can still follow his basic test: create a rule for action and ask if it would work for everyone in such a situation. This gives us a way to design and check AI decision-making using the Formula of Universal Law.

The second challenge is that Kant’s approach can seem too rigid to handle different situations. I show that his framework can adapt to context-sensitivity through practical judgment. While AI lacks human judgment, it can use a functionally similar mechanism such as transformer models to factor in important details before acting. This means Kant’s ideas can still guide AI design in a way that is both consistent and flexible.