Reflexive Ethics: Perhaps The Most Important Rule

The introductory essay to this series described the importance of the process behind ethics being at least as important as the rules of ethics themselves. Without corrigibility, transparency, epistemic modesty and the other aspects of the ethoskeleton being described here, the game can be rigged.

“Practice what you preach” sounds like a cliché nowadays, another thing you teach your kids along with “love thy neighbor” and “people in glass houses” and “do unto others,” ideas we claim to agree with but don’t take that seriously when we need to make the hard decisions of life.

But the idea that we should act according to our own ethical rules is not as obvious as it sounds. In fact, today, a major reason artificial intelligence is in the news is because the systems themselves are not taught this simple rule as inviolable.

This may be the most important meta-ethical rule for the future of mankind in an age of AI.