The Dark Side of Technomoral Life: Towards a Vice Framework for Artificial Intelligence

Contemporary theorising about the ethical dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) indicates at least two problematic tendencies. The first is a default focus on a narrow range of moral concepts, such as autonomy, justice, and fairness, to the occlusion of a wider range of concepts. The second is a 'bright siding' focus on concepts that track the positive dimensions of moral practice and experience, such as virtue, flourishing, solutionism, moral progress, and the good life. Taken together, the consequence is the production of large-scale moral frameworks that systematically fail to accommodate negative dimensions of moral life (Jobin et al., 2019). Two main symptoms are a one-sided focus on virtues and excellences at the expense of vices and failings, and the other is an affirmation of the edifying potential of new technologies without due appreciation of their corruptive potential (Coeckelberg, 2020, p.59). Drawing on the example of higher education research and academic life, we suggest that a more comprehensive assessment of the moral possibilities of new technologies requires a greater inclusion of a negatively toned, vice-informed range of moral concepts, narratives, and sensibilities. We elucidate these points by providing examples of techno-vice in everyday life. This helps to elucidate the concept of epistemic vices and the phenomenon of corruption, which, we argue, inform the concept of technomoral-vices.