Beyond Consequentialist Ethics

Intentional Action and the Virtuous Citizen in the Age of AI

Abstract

This study examines how to channel the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) toward the common good, emphasizing the ethical responsibility of those who program, regulate, and use it. Assuming a classical Aristotelian-Thomist perspective, our paper argues that, lacking intelligence and will in the philosophical sense, AI cannot be a moral agent nor responsible for its actions. In response to the challenge of AI ethics, two ethical proposals are analyzed as candidates for the ethics required in an AI-based world: consequentialism and the ethics of intentional stance. We dismiss consequentialism due to its insufficiency for such a task and opt instead for an ethics of intentional action, inspired by Martin Rhonheimer’s work, which, ultimately, should be grounded in a metaphysical theory of action like Aquinas’s. Our research concludes that, in order to live well in an AI-based society, designing technically ethical systems, in the spirit of consequentialism, is not enough; rather, it is essential to cultivate citizens who, as AI users, are endowed with virtues and, first and foremost, the virtue of prudence.