Artificial intelligence (AI) systems (autonomous vehicles, autonomous decision support systems, autonomous humanoid robots etc.) are required to make ethical decisions and it is strong feature of the AI systems that they expect goals to be provided and then they themselves deduce the action plans from the difference between the current state of the world and the expected state (goal) of the world. Of course, AI systems can assure that their actions comply with the ethics and/or Commandments and properties of subjects (Beatitudes), but generally they require the ultimate goals to be known (AI systems can deduce subgoals autonomously as well)
AI defines the goal
as the set of properties
that the expected state of the world
should have/obey.
This is in stark contrast with the ethics and the religions which make statements about actions and which formulate the Commandments (properties about actions) and the Beatitudes (properties about subjects).
What are good works, research trends and researchers in philosophical ethics and Christian (especially Roman Catholic) ethics that are considering the following questions:
- What are the goals of the people and the goals of the world in this world (yes, exactly in this world) according to the (Western, Christian, Catholic) ethical systems? Of course, I am not expecting the exhaustive list of those goals, but I would be happy to know the philosophers, important works and research trends that consider exactly the goals as the object of their research in ethics.
- If there is little research regarding the goals, what kind of reasoning we can make to deduce goals (for feeding them into AI systems) from the list of desirable ethical actions or the list of the desirable properties of the subjects?
It is true, that Christianity has reconsidered the role of Commandments, but generally Christianity has two Great Commandments of Love from which the more specific ethical actions can be derived.
I am strong supporter of formal mehtods in philosophy, therefore answers that refer to the logical and mathematical methods are especially welcome.