Jul 29, 2026 02:39 AM
https://yalereview.org/article/ai-and-th...of-writing
EXCERPT: Then, I think, there’s something even bigger, which is that if AI develops at the same rate of progress, we will be part of a gigantic philosophical experiment: Is Kant right or is Nietzsche right?
Nietzsche basically said that there is no such thing as ethics. Morality is just something that the weak have invented to get their will from the strong. There is no ethical fabric of the world; ethics are just us trying to persuade stronger people not to kill us by making them feel bad.
And then there is Kant, who claims that any reasonable entity—it doesn’t have to be humans, it could be aliens or angels or maybe computers—will arrive at the same conclusions about how we should behave toward other reasonable entities, that moral behavior is something you can and eventually will deduce from reason.
If that is true, which I hope (and I believe, actually), then very developed computing entities that are also reasoning entities will find that it’s not right to kill us, that it’s not right to lie to us. And probably—because their capacities of reasoning will be much greater than ours—they will be much more convinced than even we ourselves are that they should not kill us, or lie to us, or manipulate us.
And I have moments when I feel this is our only chance, that Kant is right and not Nietzsche. We will probably find out... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: Then, I think, there’s something even bigger, which is that if AI develops at the same rate of progress, we will be part of a gigantic philosophical experiment: Is Kant right or is Nietzsche right?
Nietzsche basically said that there is no such thing as ethics. Morality is just something that the weak have invented to get their will from the strong. There is no ethical fabric of the world; ethics are just us trying to persuade stronger people not to kill us by making them feel bad.
And then there is Kant, who claims that any reasonable entity—it doesn’t have to be humans, it could be aliens or angels or maybe computers—will arrive at the same conclusions about how we should behave toward other reasonable entities, that moral behavior is something you can and eventually will deduce from reason.
If that is true, which I hope (and I believe, actually), then very developed computing entities that are also reasoning entities will find that it’s not right to kill us, that it’s not right to lie to us. And probably—because their capacities of reasoning will be much greater than ours—they will be much more convinced than even we ourselves are that they should not kill us, or lie to us, or manipulate us.
And I have moments when I feel this is our only chance, that Kant is right and not Nietzsche. We will probably find out... (MORE - missing details)