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AI death

Managing the ethical and risk implications of rapid advances in artificial intelligence: A literature review

Meek et al. (2016)

Sub-category
Risk Domain

Ethical considerations regarding the treatment of potentially sentient AI entities, including discussions around their potential rights and welfare, particularly as AI systems become more advanced and autonomous.

"The literature suggests that throughout the development of an AI we may go through several generations of agents which do not perform as expected [37] [43]. In this case, such agents may be placed into a suspended state, terminated, or deleted. Further, we could propose scenarios where research funding for a facility running such agents is exhausted, resulting in the inadvertent termination of a project. In these cases, is deletion or termination of AI programs (the moral patient) by a moral agent an act of murder? This, an example of Robot Ethics, raises issues of personhood which parallel research in stem cell research and abortion. "(p. 688)

Other risks from Meek et al. (2016) (17)