Artificial intelligence ethical and societal impacts

The tremendous societal and economic promise of AI has been emphasized repeatedly of late. Ubiquitous applications of AI permeate the fabric of every society, discuss every facet of our future and consider every sensitive socioeconomic issue [1-2]. Societal sectors such as health and medicine, transportation, communications, infrastructure, education, defence, governance, environment and others use, interact with and deliberate on the benefits and drawbacks – sometimes specific, sometimes general – of AI. These applications create many benefits, but also create certain ethical challenges, dilemmas and concerns. Industry developers aspire to produce autonomous systems that can make ethical decisions. Much work has considered how humans might produce such ethical systems.