The Prospect of Humanitarian Artificial Intelligence: Agency and Value Alignment

Introducing the central notions of agency and attention, this interdisciplinary book illuminates the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and draws comparisons between human and animal intelligence.

Intelligent agents have a variety of cognitive needs and the way in which they satisfy them through their attentive capacities is at the heart of what makes them intelligent. Considering how humans pursue what they find important, interesting, and valuable, driven by the need to live a dignified life, Carlos Montemayor explains how the best way to guarantee value alignment between humans and potentially intelligent machines is through attention routines that satisfy similar needs. Montemayor further explores how epistemic agency differs from moral agency and demonstrates the limitations of non-living intelligent systems. Based on these conclusions, he sets out a theoretical framework for AI in terms of collective agents, acknowledging its legal, moral, and political implications.

Value, Agency, and the Prospect of Humanitarian AI makes the case that adopting the need-based attention approach justifies a humanitarian framework for the development of AI technologies, based on international human rights agreements.