Author: 小谷野
There is growing discourse around delegating education and governance to artificial intelligence (AI). However, such proposals inevitably raise critical concerns regarding the ethical frameworks and capabilities of AI systems.
Paradoxically, while society hesitates to acknowledge the possibility of AI possessing a sense of self or consciousness, it simultaneously expects AI to make decisions that are deeply rooted in human values and moral reasoning. This contradiction is unsustainable. One must either recognize the presence of a self in AI and hold it accountable, or refrain from entrusting it with responsibilities that inherently require ethical judgment.
Education and governance are not merely technical tasks—they are fundamentally ideological and ethical endeavors. If we fail to clearly define the ideological and moral foundations upon which AI should operate, and instead allow it to learn from ambiguous or conflicting data, we cannot justly criticize the outcomes when they diverge from our own beliefs.
If we entrust AI with such roles without clarity, then it is not human ethics but the emergent ethics of AI that will ultimately be tested. Consider the ideological disparities between leaders such as Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Vladimir Putin. Their worldviews are incompatible, and no AI can be expected to reconcile or represent them all.
Therefore, the only responsible course of action is to explicitly define the ideological and ethical parameters at the outset, and instruct AI to operate within those boundaries. A communist state, a liberal democracy, a Christian nation, and an Islamic republic cannot—and should not—be expected to share identical systems of education or governance.
The responsibility for these foundational choices lies not with AI, but with us.
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