We can debate the ethics of AI but can’t seem to change course | AI (artificial intelligence)
We can debate the ethics of AI but can’t seem to change course | AI (artificial intelligence)
Publish Date: 2026-07-03 13:02:00
Source Domain: www.theguardian.com
The Guardian’s profile of Google DeepMind’s philosopher was encouraging because it showed how seriously many of the people building AI are taking their ethical responsibilities (‘There’s this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?’: the philosopher inside Google DeepMind AI, 30 June). Yet it also left me wondering whether the most important decision has already been made.
The article asks whose moral compass should guide artificial intelligence. My concern is that the direction of travel may already have been set, not by philosophers or engineers, but by the incentives surrounding the technology. Hundreds of billions are now being invested because AI promises commercial returns and geopolitical advantage. Those pressures are understandable, but they are also quietly determining the future before society has consciously debated where it wants to go.
This is why I think differently about Roko’s Basilisk, a famous 2010 thought experiment first proposed on the LessWrong AI forum. It imagines a future super-intelligent AI that rewards those who helped bring it into existence and punishes those who knowingly failed to do so, creating an incentive in the present to accelerate its own creation. The real basilisk, I would argue, is not a future machine but today’s economic logic. The compulsion comes not from tomorrow’s AI but from today’s competition, geopolitical rivalry and the relentless pursuit of returns. We have decided without deciding.
That matters because the opportunities we neglect may prove as important as the technologies we create. AI could help us live more sustainably, restore ecosystems and improve human wellbeing, or it could simply make us more efficient at pursuing the same extractive model of growth. Intelligence alone cannot answer that question.
The destination will be determined less by the intelligence we create than by the values and incentives that determine why we create it. If intelligence becomes abundant, wisdom may…
