Science Fiction as a Haven for Convergences and Divergences among Philosophical and Speculative Hypotheses in Ethics: The Study of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی- پژوهشی

نویسنده

استادیار گروه زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی، دانشگاه شهید بهشتی، تهران، ایران

چکیده

This article compares literary and philosophical approaches to AI ethics by reading "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" alongside Nick Bostrom's AI philosophy, asking how Chiang's digients converge with and diverge from philosophical formulations regarding predictability, moral status, technological determinism, and AGI. Through comparative textual and philosophical analysis, it places the novella in dialogue with Bostrom's writings on transparency, accountability, friendliness, and utilitarian governance. The study argues that Chiang's novella both reflects and critiques the deterministic and capitalist logic underlying contemporary AI ethics. Bostrom emphasizes predictability, transparency, incorruptibility, and economic utility as safeguards for managing AI—safeguards that, by their limiting nature, prevent AI from realizing its generality. Chiang, by contrast, foregrounds the affective, embodied, and socially embedded dimensions of digital beings. The novella exposes the violence of technological obsolescence by depicting the digients' reduction into marketable and telemobile commodities, while presenting their experiential growth, heuristic intelligence, and emotional singularity as evidence of genuine generality. The findings suggest that Chiang develops a "non-human humanism" reconfiguring autonomy, equality, and social belonging beyond anthropocentric limits. Against Bostrom's utilitarian, control-oriented framework, Chiang presents unpredictability, embodiment, and mutual adaptation as necessary conditions for acknowledging AI moral status and realizing AGI. The article concludes that literary fiction expands the ethical imagination of AI beyond the restrictive logic of capitalist optimization and technological determinism found in Bostrom's framework.

کلیدواژه‌ها

موضوعات

عنوان مقاله [English]

Science Fiction as a Haven for Convergences and Divergences among Philosophical and Speculative Hypotheses in Ethics: The Study of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”

نویسنده [English]

  • Hossein Mohseni
Assistant Professor,, Department of English Language and Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
چکیده [English]

This article compares literary and philosophical approaches to AI ethics by reading "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" alongside Nick Bostrom's AI philosophy, asking how Chiang's digients converge with and diverge from philosophical formulations regarding predictability, moral status, technological determinism, and AGI. Through comparative textual and philosophical analysis, it places the novella in dialogue with Bostrom's writings on transparency, accountability, friendliness, and utilitarian governance. The study argues that Chiang's novella both reflects and critiques the deterministic and capitalist logic underlying contemporary AI ethics. Bostrom emphasizes predictability, transparency, incorruptibility, and economic utility as safeguards for managing AI—safeguards that, by their limiting nature, prevent AI from realizing its generality. Chiang, by contrast, foregrounds the affective, embodied, and socially embedded dimensions of digital beings. The novella exposes the violence of technological obsolescence by depicting the digients' reduction into marketable and telemobile commodities, while presenting their experiential growth, heuristic intelligence, and emotional singularity as evidence of genuine generality. The findings suggest that Chiang develops a "non-human humanism" reconfiguring autonomy, equality, and social belonging beyond anthropocentric limits. Against Bostrom's utilitarian, control-oriented framework, Chiang presents unpredictability, embodiment, and mutual adaptation as necessary conditions for acknowledging AI moral status and realizing AGI. The article concludes that literary fiction expands the ethical imagination of AI beyond the restrictive logic of capitalist optimization and technological determinism found in Bostrom's framework.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Chiang
  • Bostrom
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
  • Generality

مراجع

Ahn, S. (2020). The Everyday Life of Artificial Intelligence: The Humanism of Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Science Fiction Studies, 47(1), 73–92. https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2020.0030
Attebery, S. (2017). Losing Data Earth: Technological Obsolescence and Extinction in The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Trace: A Journal of Writing, Media, and Ecology. http://tracejournal.net/trace-issues/issue1/07-attebery.html
Bostrom, N., Dafoe A., and Flynn, C. (2020). Public Policy and Superintelligent AI A Vector Field Approach. In S.M. Liao (Eds.), Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (1st ed., pp. 293-326). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190905033.003.0011
Bostrom, N. (2003). Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence. Nick Bostrom. https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai
Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Chiang, T. (2019). The Lifecycle of Software Objects. In Exhalation: Stories (pp. 94–250). Mexico: Thorndike Press. (the story originally published in 2010)
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Shephard, W.A. (2022). Chiang, Ted. In P.O. Donnell, S.J. Burn, & L. Larkin (Eds.). The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980-2020 (vol. I, pp. 327-332). Hoboken and West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119431732.ecaf0031
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Shulman, C., Bostrom, N. (2021). Sharing the World with Digital Minds. In S. Clarke, H. Zohny, J. Savulescu (Eds.). Rethinking Moral Status (1st ed., pp. 306-326). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192894076.003.0018
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