Neuroethics and AI ethics: a proposal for collaboration

Abstract

AbstractThe scientific relationship between neuroscience and artificial intelligence is generally acknowledged, and the role that their long history of collaboration has played in advancing both fields is often emphasized. Beyond the important scientific insights provided by their collaborative development, both neuroscience and AI raise a number of ethical issues that are generally explored by neuroethics and AI ethics. Neuroethics and AI ethics have been gaining prominence in the last few decades, and they are typically carried out by different research communities. However, considering the evolving landscape of AI-assisted neurotechnologies and the various conceptual and practical intersections between AI and neuroscience—such as the increasing application of AI in neuroscientific research, the healthcare of neurological and mental diseases, and the use of neuroscientific knowledge as inspiration for AI—some scholars are now calling for a collaborative relationship between these two domains. This article seeks to explore how a collaborative relationship between neuroethics and AI ethics can stimulate theoretical and, ideally, governance efforts. First, we offer some reasons for calling for the collaboration of the ethical reflection on neuroscientific innovations and AI. Next, we explore some dimensions that we think could be enhanced by the cross-fertilization between these two subfields of ethics. We believe that considering the pace and increasing fusion of neuroscience and AI in the development of innovations, broad and underspecified calls for responsibility that do not consider insights from different ethics subfields will only be partially successful in promoting meaningful changes in both research and applications.