Can artificial intelligences suffer from mental illness? A philosophical matter to consider
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Published version
Author(s)
Ashrafian, H
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The potential for artificial intelligences and robotics in achieving the capacity of consciousness, sentience and rationality offers the prospect that these agents have minds. If so, then there may be a potential for these minds to become dysfunctional, or for artificial intelligences and robots to suffer from mental illness. The existence of artificially intelligent psychopathology can be interpreted through the philosophical perspectives of mental illness. This offers new insights into what it means to have either robot or human mental disorders, but may also offer a platform on which to examine the mechanisms of biological or artificially intelligent psychiatric disease. The possibility of mental illnesses occurring in artificially intelligent individuals necessitates the consideration that at some level, they may have achieved a mental capability of consciousness, sentience and rationality such that they can subsequently become dysfunctional. The deeper philosophical understanding of these conditions in mankind and artificial intelligences might therefore offer reciprocal insights into mental health and mechanisms that may lead to the prevention of mental dysfunction.
Date Issued
2016-06-28
Date Acceptance
2016-03-31
Citation
Science and Engineering Ethics, 2016, 23 (2), pp.403-412
ISSN
1471-5546
Publisher
Springer Verlag (Germany)
Start Page
403
End Page
412
Journal / Book Title
Science and Engineering Ethics
Volume
23
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Identifier
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27351772
PII: 10.1007/s11948-016-9783-0
Subjects
Social Sciences
Science & Technology
Arts & Humanities
Technology
Ethics
Engineering, Multidisciplinary
History & Philosophy Of Science
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Philosophy
Social Sciences - Other Topics
Engineering
History & Philosophy of Science
Science & Technology - Other Topics
Artificial intelligence
Robot
Mental
Illness
Psychiatry
Psychology
Psychoanalysis
Psychopathology
Consciousness
Sentience
Rationality
DUAL-PROCESS THEORY
DEPRESSION
ROBOTICS
RIGHTS
2201 Applied Ethics
Applied Ethics
Publication Status
Published