5 Questions for Eugenio Battaglia

Oh, brilliant. Another 'Large Moral Model.' Because what the world has been crying out for is an AI system — from a company called Evermay, no less — that claims to understand the 'nuances of ethical dilemmas' and 'incorporate diverse moral views.' Because obviously, the solution to our collective moral confusion is to outsource ethical reasoning to a statistical pattern-matcher trained on the internet. What could possibly go wrong?

We're told this model is designed to navigate the thorny thickets of moral philosophy — abortion, war, distributive justice — and somehow synthesize a consensus. Because that's worked so well for humans. I suppose we should be grateful it's not just another chatbot that hallucinates legal advice. But the sheer hubris of thinking you can 'incorporate diverse moral views' into a single model, as if morality were a salad bar, is breathtaking. Eugenio Battaglia, the man behind it, will presumably explain how the model handles the trolley problem without causing a PR disaster. My money's on 'I cannot answer that as it may offend someone.'

The real kicker: This is being built by a private company, with no regulatory oversight, no public debate, and no one asking whether we even want a machine telling us what's right or wrong. But sure, let's let a probabilistic model decide the ethical framework for our future. What could possibly go wrong? Apart from everything.