In 2019, I already approached the question of human rights from the angle of the future, I concluded that if the Western system could bring a methodology to conceive rules, a reflection stemming from Diderot's philosophy of the Enlightenment, it could not be taken as the sole bearer of "human rights". I continued my conclusion by saying that we had to move to a new conception of the individual: not as an indivisible unit but as a support for a collective in a society that has become liquid, mobile, where interactions are faster, without borders, where the real and nor the Miao ethnic group, nor the Youroba ethnic group, nor even the Indonesian shamanthe virtual are no longer dissociated.

 

Three years later, my point of departure is to consider the rights of the future from a collective perspective. This is necessary because a society that is too individualized will no longer be able to achieve unity tomorrow.

 

In 2021, UNESCO devoted its reflection to transhumanism, posthumanism, augmented human and other human futures. Clearly posing the questions of AI. This means that the human condition is not immutable, on the contrary it is evolving and perfectible as evidenced by all scientific, economic and political advances since the earliest civilizations.

 

In a liquid society where everything is intertwined, technology, technique, the different dimensions of reality, we must ask the question of human rights (augmented) as much as those of the rights of robots (with artificial intelligence) under the angle of ethics.

 

As demonstrated in my article "Ia & human rights", it is difficult in a complex world, affected by the acceleration of digital technology as well as by the multiplication of information, to tell us how to cut through all these ethics in order to generate a framework applicable to all and for all. In order to do so, we should partly return to Ruwen Ogien's minimal ethics, coupled with another ethics that has not been mentioned, which could be expressed under the title "ethics of benevolence".

 

We must therefore understand the question of the rights of an augmented humanity from the angle of the ethics of benevolence. The two go together and it is even by pushing the question of ethics to its maximum that we will succeed in establishing just rights for all...

 

How to quickly ask the question of the ethics of benevolence? How can we make it our guide for the society of tomorrow? I will take up two points here: ethics applied to digital professions and how to establish an ethic of benevolence if it is not through a common minimal digital ethic?

 

applied ethics for digital professions?

 

In 2018, a Hippocratic Oath is born for Data-Scientists. It is based on five main principles: Scientific integrity and rigor: "I will exploit data with all the required rigor and in accordance with the best standards of my profession."

 

Transparency: "I will inform all stakeholders in an understandable and precise manner about the purposes, methods and potential implications of my use of the data".

 

Fairness: "I will always ensure that individuals or groups are not discriminated against on the basis of illegal or illegitimate criteria, directly or indirectly, as a result of my work with data.

 

Respect: "I will conduct my professional activity with respect for the privacy and dignity of individuals in all their dimensions.

 

Responsabilité et indépendance : 《 J’assumerai mes responsabilités en cas de manquements ou de conflits d’intérêt et je donnerai l’alerte si des actes illégaux liés à des données sont constatés 》.

 

Responsibility and independence: "I will assume my responsibilities in case of breaches or conflicts of interest and I will sound the alarm if illegal acts related to data are observed".

 

On this principle, should we have ethical contracts signed in all digital professions that are precise on the uses (rights, duties, the interstices between the two)? Or should we provide for a common minimum ethic?

 

a common minimal digital ethics?

 

Do not lie

 

Do not bias data Do not deceive

 

Do not use data sets (racist or with exclusive standards) ?

 

Respect the copyright

 

Respect the right of data

 

Educate yourself and others

 

Act in the public interest

 

Create free and open software (let's remember here that open formats promote data interoperability).

 

Let us try to conclude ethically

 

If ethical reflections are in permanent movement, it is essential not to forget that they must be discussed publicly, in a contradictory way, in order to widen their field of action as accurately as possible. Let's divert Wittgenstein "the world is everything that happens", "ethics is everything that happens and includes all the uses that are made of what happens". This means that an ethical reflection cannot exclude the freshwater fisherman, nor an Inuit, who performs the dragon dance, nor the Japanese tourist who admires Paris on a rainy day, nor that woman who crosses the Himalayas on foot, etc. On this point I agree with the work of UNESCO. However, ethics must be emancipated from all the (cultural) biases that are ours.

 

To help us do this, we must detach ourselves from the two types of discourse to which we are accustomed in the face of the development of technology, namely "utopias" (which refer to an idealized vision of society) and dystopias (which refer to the vision of an authoritarian government). We should undoubtedly position our ethical reflection within the framework of a protopia. That is, progress is here, even if imperceptibly. Each decade is better than the previous one, in technological terms it is obvious (the first surgeons would be surprised to see robots performing surgical operations without error, for example). In reality, creating another thinking "species", another form of life with a cognition, brings us back to our humanity, to its shadowy areas that we have not finished questioning. It is interesting, at a time when we are conferring a right on the robot by attributing it a personality, to worry even more about ethics and to push the framework of its application by confronting it with meta-ethics.

 

This would undoubtedly prevent us, for example, from building a social imaginary around the submission of robots and their enslavement. Or asking ourselves who will have the last word in case of a conflict of authority? We know that our "irrational" side does not make us make excellent decisions? But how do we judge such an action and in what situational context. We should already define, within the framework of a common ethic, what this human-machine cooperation would be based on the strengths of each party. The key to a successful union between humans and machines in terms of work process performance is to recognize that each has unique intrinsic characteristics that help optimize processes overall. For example, machines can store a huge amount of information, process it instantly, make predictions based on artificial intelligence and support a wide variety of processes simultaneously.

 

On the other hand, humans are capable of empathy, leadership, intuition, invention and sound judgment. These qualities, combined with the memory of machines and their great abilities to predict, process, reprogram, and resist, can help us create ideal teams in businesses and organizations. Contrary to what I hear from both sides, ethics is not a brake, on the contrary, it is a way to progress together towards a fairer society for all, to avoid my too obvious bias, I would say a more balanced society, better shared, respectful of human rights as well as robots' rights.

 

China, which is ahead in all these technologies, must show us the way. In particular by asking the question of the link between the ethics of benevolence and the "virtue of non-rivalry" of the Tao-Te-King (LXVIII). Today, China is opening up a new path, that of the world power that proposes a mutualization of knowledge and cultures for the benefit not of a few but of all. A community of destiny that opens the way to new rights for all humanity.