Finding the Lost: Recalibrating AI Ethics or Retracking Trust, Knowledge, and Wisdom

When it comes to how artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping knowledge, trust and wisdom, questions arise such as whether AI can be considered a valid source of knowledge, a trustworthy agent or a guide to wisdom for human beings. Seeking answers to these questions, this chapter re-evaluates the essence and evolution of these human goods and investigates their transformation by AI. After examining AI-led trajectories of these human goods, the chapter explores distributed forms of these human goods as they are driven and impacted by AI. It contributes a conceptualization of how trust, knowledge, and wisdom are relocated and re-cycled in light of the findings of Botsman (2017) and Vallor (2017) concerning distributed trust and wisdom. It is considered these human goods would subsist alongside their distributed forms; however, the latter will likely prevail for the pervasive and substitutive nature of AI, posing a risk of moral and intellectual shift. It is proposed that AI ethics should adapt its tools and principles to address identified risks, proactively tackling the potential displacement of these human goods through a pre-emptive policy approach, rather than solely emphasizing value alignment.