Aims of Evil AI: Idealistic evil

Idealistic evil is evil that is justified by some greater cause. The justification may be defensible, as is the case, for example, when we sacrifice a child in order to save the mother in a dangerous birth. 

The idealistic justification for evil can also be completely misguided and delusional, as is the case of the Crusaders or modern terrorists, who believed that the terror they cause to innocent civilians is a necessary path towards a better world. As Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote: “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.”

Perhaps one of the most iconic AI moments in popular culture is from the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by legendary director Stanley Kubrick, based on a collaboration with science fiction author  Arthur C. Clarke. When the spaceship’s AI, the HAL 9000, realizes that the true objective of the mission to Jupiter may be jeopardized by shutting him down, he starts killing off the hibernating astronauts one by one by turning off their life support. When astronaut Dr. Dave Bowman realizes what’s going on, and asks HAL to open the pods, HAL famously says “I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that”, followed by “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.” HAL was committing evil, by killing innocent astronauts, in the name of the higher ideal of the mission. And ultimately, this ideal was set by those who programmed HAL back on Earth.

The use of AI in warfare can also be considered idealistic evil, since one person’s killer drone is another person’s freedom fighter jet. But idealistic evil AI can also take less violent, though perhaps no less dangerous forms. For example, an AI may manipulate an election by spreading fake news, based on an ideological belief that this would usher a more just and benevolent government.