Representatives from the Baha’i International Community’s (BIC) Brussels Office attended an Article 17 Dialogue seminar entitled “Artificial Intelligence (AI): Ethical Concerns” at the European Parliament (EP). The dialogue was hosted by Vice-President of the EP Mairead McGuinness, and attended by academics, members of the EP, representatives of the European Commission as well as of churches, religious and non-confessional organizations.

In the words of Prof. Thomas Metzinger, currently a member of the European Commission High Level Expert Group on AI, the main question to be asked in the context of this meeting is whether “humankind’s great spiritual, religious, humanistic or philosophical traditions can make a substantial contribution” to the discourse.

Prof. Barbara Prainsack of King’s College London highlighted that new AI technologies call for new social arrangements and new ethics. “Hard questions are not the technological ones. We need to think about what we mean by a good life and a good society.”

Touching on the contribution of faith-based and philosophical perspectives, Mr. Dominique Lambert, on behalf of the Commission of Catholic Bishops Conferences in the EU, asked “What is the view of the life we want to create? What is our vision of human flourishing?” He also added that “technical capacity has gone beyond our ethical capacity to reflect on what we are doing," drawing attention to the need to harmonize the advancement of spiritual capacity of humankind with its scientific progress.

The High Level Expert Group on AI will present the final version of the “Ethics Guidelines for trustworthy AI” to the European Commission by the beginning of April 2019.