Love your robot as yourself?
New book by NIU’s David Gunkel
raises questions about ethics, technology

by Tom Parisi

In the science fiction film classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a perfectly brilliant computer becomes an unemotional killer. Ah, the stuff of science fiction, right?

A new book by NIU Communication Professor David Gunkel might make you think otherwise.

The book is in fact titled, “Thinking Otherwise.” In it, Gunkel, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, investigates the ethical challenges, complications and responsibilities that arise from our interactions with increasingly more sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence, from computers to robots.

Ethics is typically understood as being concerned with questions of responsibility for and in the face of an “other,” presumably another person. But Gunkel notes that this cornerstone of modern ethical thought has been significantly challenged, most visibly by animal rights activists but also increasingly by those at the cutting edge of computer technology, intelligent systems, virtual realities and cybernetics.

Recent technological advances introduce the possibility of ethical responsibility toward machines – and vice versa.

“The book in a sense is about the ethics of the future. We’re just at the threshold of this becoming an issue,” Gunkel says. “For the average computer user, these ethical questions aren’t an immediate concern, but they are percolating in circles of cutting-edge technology, for people working in the areas of artificial intelligence and robotics, for instance.”

Science fiction writers and filmmakers have been addressing such ethical dilemmas for some time, Gunkel says, in such works as “Blade Runner,” “The Matrix,” and “Battlestar Galactica,” as well as in the 1968 epoch, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“For my money right now, the people really thinking through the moral responsibilities of machines are the science fiction writers,” Gunkel says. But he also notes how these ethical dilemmas are filtering into the contemporary culture of technology.

Most online interactions are not people to people, but rather people to machine or machine to machine, Gunkel says. Advanced computer systems are already making autonomous decisions that have ethical implications in such areas as privacy and finance.

An even more direct example of this new ethical awareness comes from South Korea, where the government is working to create ethical codes that would prevent humans from abusing robots and robots from abusing humans.

Geared primarily for a scholarly audience and technology professionals, “Thinking Otherwise” was published in April by Purdue University Press and has been well received. It is one of the first scholarly books devoted to the ethical treatment and moral standing of artificial intelligence, robots and information systems.

“This erudite and innovative book totally reorients our thinking away from binary logic,” says Clifford Christians, the Charles H. Sandage Distinguished Professor of Research and Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“The philosophical dimensions of information and communication technology have never been outlined better,” Christians adds. “(Gunkel’s) critique of digital reason and his machine-as-other turn communication ethics on its head.”

While “Thinking Otherwise” outlines the ethical debates, its author doesn’t attempt to provide definitive answers.

“I try to frame the dilemmas,” Gunkel says. “But you’re not going to find the 10 commandments of robots’ rights in this book.”

More information on author David Gunkel and his new book, “Thinking Otherwise,” is available online at http://thinkingotherwise.org/ and http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/Books%20Pages/ThinkingOtherwise.asp.

6-4-07