NF-CONSEQ Consequentialist / utilitarian
Source frames alignment or responsibility in consequentialist terms theory
Node view — 5 coded passages across the corpus
Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Alignment · Iason Gabriel · 2020
“In general, it seems likely that it will be easier to align AI with moral theories that have the same fundamental structure based on maximizing reward over time in the face of uncertainty, than with other alternatives. Consequentialist moral theories, the most famous of which is act utilitarianism, fit the bill.”why coded: RL's optimizing structure is structurally consequentialist-friendly · unit #3, pp. 413
Artificial Intelligence, Humanistic Ethics (Daedalus 151(2):232-243) · John Tasioulas · 2022
“Beyond the pluralism of values is their incommensurability. [...] although some decisions will be superior to others, there may be no single decision that is optimal [...] This incommensurability calls into question the availability of some optimizing function that determines the single option that is, all things considered, most beneficial or morally right.”why coded: Direct attack on preference-utilitarian optimization as AI ethics' default · unit #2, pp. 235
A matter of principle? AI alignment as the fair treatment of claims · Iason Gabriel; Geoff Keeling · 2025
“efforts to justify a specific goal for AI alignment or set of AI decisions by reference to the correctness of a single moral theory, such as utilitarianism, seem destined to fail (Gabriel, 2020). [...] Doing so, would then involve building AI systems that exercise power over people in ways that they have good reason to reject – raising the spectre of both value imposition and domination.”why coded: Utilitarian foundation of HHH rejected as wrong-kind justification · unit #5, pp. 1957
No value alignment without control · Björn Lundgren · 2026
“An AI system 'being told to keep humans safe and happy, [...] might entomb everyone in concrete coffins on heroin drips.' [...] since heroin users tend to prefer getting more heroin rather than getting clean, the system may decide to experiment with giving individuals heroin. The problem then is that heroin changes the user's preferences [...] in a way that makes their preferences easy to satisfy.”why coded: Heroin-drip case defeats preference and classical utilitarianism · unit #8, pp. 7
Understanding the Process of Human-AI Value Alignment · Jack McKinlay; Marina De Vos; Janina A. Hoffmann;… · 2026
“Consequentialism and the related utilitarianism have thrived under machine learning paradigms. Credit is given to the popularity of utility functions and reinforcement learning and its pre-existing history with economics. [...] As a result, deontology-based approaches have been left feeling marginalised, with most of the papers identified as deontic in our survey being theoretical analyses rather than implementations.”why coded: Consequentialism thrives under ML (utility functions/RL) - SLR confirmation of Gabriel's architecture-bias thesis · unit #6, pp. 13