Conference dates
October 26-28, 2023
Authors
Sara Choi, Cornell University
Dawn E. Schrader, Cornell University
October 26-28, 2023
Authors
Sara Choi, Cornell University
Dawn E. Schrader, Cornell University
Background
Research premise
In the race to incorporate AI technologies, I’ve observed long-term consequences of design and its impact on people's sense of personal agency, trust, identity, and belonging. With AI systems capable of emotionally persuasive interactions, there’s growing concern about their potential to exploit cognitively and psychologically vulnerable populations. This led me to collaborate with my moral psychology professor to examine the role of intentional design and moral education frameworks in mitigating the risks of normalizing human-AI interactions for those learning how to trust, namely children.
Paper session
Abstract
Technology has demonstrable effects on learning, decision making, personal agency, identity, and sociality in interpersonal, community, and global spheres. It even affects our emotions such as happiness, sadness, motivation, and sense of belonging. As AI comes to resemble humans more closely, ethical challenges arise for developers of the technology and those interacting with it. This is of particular importance for youth as they are born into this AI/robotic world because they are unfamiliar with a non-technologically tethered existence. Youth and even digital natives engage in anthropomorphism, imbuing nonhuman things with human characteristics. This paper identifies ethical and normative principles underlying the idea of recreating humans in a digital or robotic form as well as the moral and ethical impacts of human interactions with embodied AI (e.g., robots, agents, avatars) and disembodied AI (e.g., chatbots, Alexa, Siri) regarding its structural makeup, its functions, and smart capabilities compared to humans. It then examines the potentialities and dangers of human interactions with AI, especially for youth.
We propose rethinking the content and forms of moral education of youth and vulnerable populations to protect children from potential exploitation at the point of “the singularity”–where human and smart systems become indistinguishable. This indistinguishability could be in the minds of youth (and adults) or in actuality–the real development of AI systems. We posit that the form of embodiment of AI will play an increasingly less relevant role for children and digital natives, and conclude that cognitive developmental moral education of AI developers should focus on moral sensitivity to these psychological factors of youth interaction. We advocate for the industry’s consideration of not just direct users but also those who will be affected by those users’ decisions, especially vulnerable populations—namely youth—and their goals in striving for AI alignment.
S. Choi and D. Schrader. 2023.
"Embodiment of AI and its Social, Cognitive, and Moral Impacts on Youth"
Presented at the 49th Association for Moral Education Conference, October 26-28, Fort Worth, TX, USA.
We propose rethinking the content and forms of moral education of youth and vulnerable populations to protect children from potential exploitation at the point of “the singularity”–where human and smart systems become indistinguishable. This indistinguishability could be in the minds of youth (and adults) or in actuality–the real development of AI systems. We posit that the form of embodiment of AI will play an increasingly less relevant role for children and digital natives, and conclude that cognitive developmental moral education of AI developers should focus on moral sensitivity to these psychological factors of youth interaction. We advocate for the industry’s consideration of not just direct users but also those who will be affected by those users’ decisions, especially vulnerable populations—namely youth—and their goals in striving for AI alignment.
S. Choi and D. Schrader. 2023.
"Embodiment of AI and its Social, Cognitive, and Moral Impacts on Youth"
Presented at the 49th Association for Moral Education Conference, October 26-28, Fort Worth, TX, USA.
Notes
This paper is not published. Please reach out to me or Dr. Schrader for more information about our research.
Learn more about the Association for Moral Education and past conferences on their website.
This paper is not published. Please reach out to me or Dr. Schrader for more information about our research.
Learn more about the Association for Moral Education and past conferences on their website.