This new novel is an excellently written and gripping tale of possible moral consequences of AI development. At the end of each chapter I found it difficult to stop reading.
I don’t usually enjoy novels or articles about ethics or morality, ethics being personal codes of behavior, morality being group codes (in this essay, for brevity, they are both termed “morality”), because morality is subjective, expressing an individual’s reaction to a subject, whether it induces attraction or revulsion. Thus, many cultures have found human sacrifice to be moral, while we don’t (I hope). We can debate forever if free speech is morally correct no matter what its subject, to no avail, because there’s no absolute cosmic backdrop of right and wrong determining a permissible subject, whether it be political expression or pornographic. We have intense arguments about abortion which we will never resolve, because the ultimate criterion is whether someone finds abortion sometimes necessary for ultimately humane reasons, or does not.
In Culpability, however, Hilsinger taps into moral questions arising from AI, questions that are so new to human cultures that we may need to argue about an absolute right or wrong just so we can decide, as a group, how to handle the technology.
While avoiding spoilers, I’ll just reveal that the novel deals with “moral” questions concerning AI powered auto-drive in cars, and applications to medical, military and social questions (such as: Is it moral to create an AI “friend” for a vulnerable pre-teen girl?). Holsinger does not resolve such questions; he presents them as they present themselves.
