Tag Archives: Heteronomy

In these times of pandemic lots of youngsters say their youth is taken away. Others complain that the government has taken control over their life and has limited their freedom. Some have become afraid that governments want to change their person and even go so far by manipulating their DNA.  There are really people who think it would be possible that governments could make robots of their citizens.

R.H. (Rusty) Foerger wrote already in 2015

Conscience and Ethics:

It is odd, isn’t it, that science needs to be reminded that it is a root in the word conscience; and that there is a need for morality in this field of study that gives rise to the Robot. There is even a discipline known as Roboethics, in which machines of artificial intelligence are also considered artificial moral agents (AMA’s).

The issue of morality and technology has been beckoning ever more forcefully since the Industrial Revolution began (if you are morality-phobic, then consider the notion of ethics). From Nobel’s Dynamite, to Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Bomb, to today’s misnomer: the smart bomb, there is a pricked conscience behind each failure of improved (?) technology. Thus Alan E. Lewis writes:

Modern science, judged by the fruit it bears, has thrown into sharp relief humanity’s fateful determination not to remain as creatures, conjoined in mutuality with all creation, but to be our own masterful creators…

… there is a cosmic wedge between… facts and values, allowing society to analyze, exploit, and control nature and its resources without reference to the spiritual meaning and moral consequences of its rapacity and heteronomy. {Artificial Intelligence: Conscience and Consciousness}

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Of further interest

The Theology of Artificial Intelligence

What Everyone Must Know About Artifical Intelligence

Heteronomy or Autonomy, You Choose