Digital Technology for Humans

The Myth of AI, Human Dignity, and Neo-Luddism

Robert Hanna

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111261195
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Digital ethics and AI ethics are of fundamental importance for humankind and its future. Hanna shows how specifically Kantian moral principles can be applied to the design, production, and implementation of digital technology, with a special focus on how these principles flow from the concept and fact of human dignity. His core thesis is that digital technology is nothing more and nothing less than a tool created by humankind for the betterment of humankind, whose use should be constrained by Kantian moral principles grounded in human dignity. This thesis promises to stimulate new research on Kantian approaches to digital ethics and AI ethics. It also has important political implications, including a clarion call for us to engage in the self-conscious, self-disciplined, and free exercise of our own innate cognitive, affective, and practical capacities, in the face of new and exceptionally powerful forms of digital technology—e.g., chatbots—that threaten to undermine our ability to think, feel, and act for ourselves.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Note on References to Kant’s Works
• Further Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Digital Technology Is Our Tool, Not Our Master
• 2 Beyond Deep Thought: A New Critique of AI
• 3 What’s So Special About Human Dignity? Its Metaphysics
• 4 Human Dignity and The Highest Good: Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory
• 5 Moral Principles of Dignitarian Digital Ethics
• 6 How Digital Technology Can Systematically Shape Our Lives in Bad, False, and Wrong Ways, and How Radically Enlightened Dignitarians Can and Should Push Back Against It
• 7 Conclusion: Dignitarian Neo-Luddism with Respect to Digital Technology
• Index