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berkestoday at 11:24 AM1 replyview on HN

People and societies.

Your question is an important one, but also one that has been extensively researched, documented and improved upon. Whole fields of science, like "Metaethics" deal with answering your question. Other fields of science with defining "normative ethics" aka ethics that "everyone agrees upon" and so on.

I may have misread your question as a somewhat dismissive sarcastic take or as a "Ethics are nonsense, because of who defines them". So I tried to answer it as an honest question. ;)


Replies

Yizahitoday at 1:06 PM

Not quite. You are describing "kinds of ethics" after ethics is an already established concept. I.e. actual examples of human ethics. Now the question is who defines ethics as concept in general. Humans can have ethics, but is it applicable to the computer programs at all? Sure, programs can have programmed limitations, but is that called ethics at all? Does my Outlook client has ethics, only because it has configured rules? What is the difference between my email client automatically responding to an email with "salesforce" mentioned and an LLM program automatically responding to a query with the word "plutonium"?