Privacy and Artificial Intelligence: Ethical Concerns and Normative Approaches
Artificial intelligence is a technology full of potential but also of risks, therefore raising numerous ethical questions. Part of the latter has to do with its possibly devastating impact on privacy, which was already being threatened since the emergence of the internet. By going beyond informational privacy and entering the domains of physical, mental, and decisional privacy, this article begins by clarifying the connection between artificial intelligence and those four dimensions of privacy. The most relevant ethical concerns that arise from that relationship – from the ubiquitous data collection to the free will manipulation or the technological opacity – are then analysed. Subsequently, they are also interpreted in light of the three major normative ethical theories: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Finally, it is discussed why, from a normative perspective, a consequentialist approach is likely to be more favourable to the flourishing of artificial intelligence than a deontological or virtue ethics one.