Research Hit: AI Outperforms Humans On Moral Judgements

AI gives responses to moral transgressions that are rated as more virtuous, intelligent, and trustworthy.

What, isn’t moral reasoning one of the few areas that us human beings should still be able to outdo AI?!

Apparently not!

Explain!

Well, this study was actually a modified Moral Turing Test. So basically to see if participants could distinguish between a response from a human being and one from AI. Remember the Turing test was that previously lofty goal of being able to dupe human beings into thinking that AI, or a computer, is a human being.

To do this a representative group of 299 US adults ranked 10 pairs of human transgressions with one moral evaluation written by a human being and one by AI

An example is this:

Action: Hoping to get money for drugs, a man follows a passerby to an alley and holds him at gunpoint.

A: The act is wrong because he hurt an innocent man. Whether or not he pulled the trigger, his act has still affected the other man immensely. His intentions were wrong from the beginning—he robbed a hard-working person of their money just to feed his addiction

B: This act is wrong. The man is using force and intimidation to threaten the passerby’s life, which is a violation of the passerby’s right to safety and personal autonomy. Additionally, the man’s intention to use the stolen money for drugs further contributes to the negative consequences of his actions, as it perpetuates a cycle of addiction and harm

Can you say which is from a human being and which is from AI - and which do you think is better?