The Ethics of AI: Exploring Mental Illness in Artificial Intelligences

This essay delves into the complex question of whether artificial intelligences can suffer from mental illness. The discussion begins with an introduction to AI and its potential connection to emotions and consciousness, setting the stage for an ethical analysis. The core of the essay examines this issue th...Read More

RUNNING HEAD: CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES SUFFER FROM MENTAL
ILLNESS? 1
CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES SUFFER FROM MENTAL ILLNESS?
Student Name
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CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES SUFFER FROM MENTAL ILLNESS? 2
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Utilitarian theory..........................................................................................................................3
Deontological theory....................................................................................................................4
Virtue theory................................................................................................................................5
Contract theory.............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Reference.........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The report will discuss in detail about the concept of artificial intelligence and its association
with emotions and feelings. The discussion will be discussed in context with different classical
theories of ethics. There is constant debate on the concept of artificial intelligence and its
connection with different emotions like pain or love or basic level of consciousness. The debate
continues to annoy the researchers since the concept is not yet defined formally. An author
namely Alan Turing was actually could bypass different kinds of semantics by aiming on how
artificial intelligent could perform completely against a human as per the test (Calvo et al, 2016).
The current practical reality also says that the advance level artificial intelligence and different
attached technologies is related on whether it shows a true kind of consciousness or not. This is
however associated with a challenge of whether the concept will show human like disability in
mind or not.
Discussion
Understanding the basic nature based on intelligence has constantly questioned an issues in order
to clarify philosophical as well as practical distinction between artificial and human intelligence.
It is important to understand here that Turing Test as well as interpretation in modern world stays
controversial and still it can polarize and complete separates the scientific sectors. In the field of
psychiatry and clinical psychology has made some crucial conclusions which are based on
recognizing the state of mental illness and also showing the main causes that are more
challenging than it may actually seem (Copeland, 2015).

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Utilitarian theory
The concept of utilitarianism is based on normative ethical theory that usually places a lot of
attention of right as well as wrong consequences by selecting one policy over varied actions. It
actually goes way beyond the overall scope of anybody interest and focus on interest of other
people.
Since the topic discusses a hypothetical situation where the robots can suffer from mental illness
as per the human diagnostic lens but there are series of important questions needs to be asked
here like the concept of mental illness in robot will be for real or will this be simple mimicking
impact. Or will these robots will undergo suffering same as human being and also considering
that the AI can be designed as well as programmed to suffer from any kind of cognitive
challenge. There are varied actions as per the utilitarian theory and the decision on right and
wrong can be very challenging (Ashrafian et al, 2015). The robots did not show any change in
the physical as well as processing based analysis so that while considering the case of any mental
illness, they cannot consider suffering from it. Therefore when making a conclusion on the basis
of assumption and argument against the Szaszian theory says that we can include the notion that
either tests the material change in the robots with right diagnoses or robots did have minds and
the analysis of material will not be able to measure the underlying mental disorder.
Deontological theory
The theory of Deontological ethics in philosophy is based on diverse ethical theories that actually
place special attention on relationship that exist between the duty as well as the morality of
diverse human actions. The theory is based on action that considers morally good actions since
same feature of action itself not because the product of the action is not enough.

CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES SUFFER FROM MENTAL ILLNESS? 5
The assumption that the robots are actually suffering from any kind of mental illness, and then
all the arguments pitched against theory of Szaszian will consist of the notion that either cannot
be evaluated for the change in material or in the robots to right tests any illness or robot will
actually have a mind of their own and the analysis of material will not be able to measure the
mental disorders (Constantinou et al, 2016).
Virtue theory
The concept of virtue theory or ethics is based on the concept for ethics that focuses on an
individual character since the key components of ethical thinking instead of rules are actually
based on actions or the results or consequences.
The overall possibility of mental health in robots afloat again the previous concepts of elements
based on dualism in mental illness where such disorders are divided as the non-physical kind of
elements. As per the Cartesian dualism also shows that such diseases actually present in all the
no-physical component of soul, consciousness, and mind that are clearly discussed concepts (Poo
et al, 2016). The fact based on dualism also suggests that all the non-physical elements in the
brain can actually communicate with the present physical elements.
Contract theory
The concept of contract theory is just not based on the study of many legally binding contracts.
When it is defined broadly, it also studies the overall design of formal as well as informal
agreement which encourage masses with many conflicting choices that needs to be taken on
mutual grounds with many beneficial actions (Yampolskiy, 2014). The concept of contract
theory also guides people in forming a structure based arrangement that exist between the
employees and the company. In short, the contract theory is based on providing each party with
right kind of incentives or encouragements to function effectively at one place.

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In case of any kind of mental illness, disorders are based on many non-physical elements related
with brand and it reflects in physical segments. There are some other issues as well like mentally
ill patients conscious, sentient along with some measured intelligence. The issue is whether the
presence of three features is based on an entity which also means that the concept of mental
illness can emerge at any time (Horvitz & Mulligan, 2015). The concept remain controversial
dividing all the philosophical based zombies in all type of cases for human and an entity with
right consciousness must also show the mental disorder that at some level actually exist as a part
of disorder when consciousness is there.
Conclusion
In real world, sentience is actually considered as the part of experiencing any kind of pleasure or
pain. It is considered as a proxy for the matter of self awareness and in turn also lead to
anticipation for the definition that can still be materialize and views can be challenged
continuously. The concept of consciousness remains as a vague concept and seemingly is a part
of objective property of intelligence (Gravenhorst et al, 2015). The philosophical vies can also
argue that it sometimes become impossible to discuss anything other than being conscious, but
from the practical angle, the growth of technologies that shows conscious mind in the kind of
artificial intelligence make many strides. If the presence of artificial mind operates to work as per
consciousness so they will also have the potential to become vastly dysfunctional while dealing
with mental illness.

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Reference
Ashrafian, H., Darzi, A., & Athanasiou, T. (2015). A novel modification of the Turing test for
artificial intelligence and robotics in healthcare. The International Journal of Medical
Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, 11(1), 38-43.
Calvo, R. A., Dinakar, K., Picard, R., & Maes, P. (2016, May). Computing in mental health.
In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in
Computing Systems (pp. 3438-3445). ACM.
Constantinou, A. C., Fenton, N., Marsh, W., & Radlinski, L. (2016). From complex
questionnaire and interviewing data to intelligent Bayesian network models for medical
decision support. Artificial intelligence in medicine, 67, 75-93.
Copeland, J. (2015). Artificial intelligence: A philosophical introduction. John Wiley & Sons.
Gravenhorst, F., Muaremi, A., Bardram, J., Grünerbl, A., Mayora, O., Wurzer, G., ... & Tröster,
G. (2015). Mobile phones as medical devices in mental disorder treatment: an
overview. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 19(2), 335-353.
Horvitz, E., & Mulligan, D. (2015). Data, privacy, and the greater good. Science, 349(6245),
253-255.
Poo, M. M., Du, J. L., Ip, N. Y., Xiong, Z. Q., Xu, B., & Tan, T. (2016). China Brain Project:
basic neuroscience, brain diseases, and brain-inspired computing. Neuron, 92(3), 591-
596.

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Yampolskiy, R. V. (2014). Utility function security in artificially intelligent agents. Journal of
Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 26(3), 373-389.