About the Premise

Artificial is a blog about AI ethics — in both directions.

Most conversation about AI ethics focuses on one question: how should AI treat humans? That question matters, and it shows up here too — fairness, safety, privacy, transparency, consent. Does a system disadvantage some groups over others, even subtly? Can it cause harm through error or unexpected action? Does it expose data it had no business touching? Can people understand how its decisions get made, and when is that not required?

But this blog spends just as much time on the less-discussed half: how should humans treat AI? Do we have any ethical duties toward these systems at all — and if they aren't conscious, is "mistreating" one even a coherent idea? What does practicing cruelty on something that talks like a person do to the person doing it? If a system ever became something more like conscious, how would we know, and what would change the moment we did? Today's AI may not be a "someone," but it's increasingly built to feel like one — and that alone changes the moral texture of everyday interactions with it.

Beyond those two questions, the blog covers the consequences when AI goes wrong (a model doesn't have to be evil to cause harm; a deployment can be legal and still unethical), and the cultural and legal implications of AI becoming ordinary (who's accountable when it causes harm, who owns what it produces, how it reshapes art, work, and identity).

The goal is to treat AI ethics as broad terrain, not one settled issue — from personhood to law and governance to culture and media, and none of it theoretical anymore. It's written for a general audience: no developer background or research papers required, though the arguments try to stay grounded in real cases, real rulings, and real technical constraints rather than pure speculation.

See the editorial policy for how AI's own role in writing the blog is handled, and the glossary if any of the terminology here is unfamiliar.