Ethics helps people work well with each other. When we live in groups, we need rules to stop fights and help everyone get along.
Scientists like Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt have studied how these rules came about.
Greene wrote a book called Moral Tribes. He talks about how ethics stopped people from being too greedy.
Picture a tribe where everyone eats nuts, berries, and fish. If one person takes too much, their family might do well. But there’s only so much food. If someone takes too much, others might starve. The whole tribe could fall apart.
Even if the greedy family lives, the other people would be very angry. This shows why having good rules is important for everyone to survive.
Haidt says ethics is like a tool that helps selfish people work together. This idea helps explain why many different cultures have similar basic rules, like being fair and loyal.
How We Learn to Be Good
Our brains are built to help us be good to others. Scientists have found that humans naturally don’t like violence.
This helps us avoid hurting each other and work together instead.
People also like it when others are kind and fair. When we see someone being nice, it makes us feel good.
Our brains release happy chemicals when things are fair. This helps us trust each other and work as a team.
What AI Can’t Do
AI is different from people. It doesn’t live in a group or need to get along with others.
It doesn’t have a brain like ours that naturally knows right from wrong. AI can be taught to spot things that look like good behavior, but it can’t really “get” ethics like we do.
Asking if AI can have ethics is like asking if a hammer can be kind. AI is a tool, not a person.
It knows about human values because we tell it, but it won’t come up with these ideas on its own.
Using AI for Big Choices
Since AI can’t truly understand ethics, we need to be careful when we use it to make important choices.
In areas like courts, hospitals, or self-driving cars, AI might have to make decisions that affect people’s lives.
This doesn’t mean we can’t use AI for these things. But we need to remember that AI doesn’t understand ethics like we do.
It might make unfair choices if the information we give it isn’t fair. Also, if we let AI make too many choices for us, we might forget how to make hard choices ourselves.
