The virtuous technologist: A mentor and role model to train the next generation

To implement an Aristotelian virtue ethics framework to live well with artificial intelligence (as described in Smith & Vickers, 2024), we need teachers who can serve as mentors and role models for the next generation. Finding mentors who can teach both technical expertise and model ethical deployment of that expertise is challenging, and Aristotle provides few hints on how to uncover such mentors. The account of expertise in Plato’s Gorgias seems to align with Aristotle’s vision and provides additional detail. The upshot of the conversation between Socrates and his interlocutors is that an expert should have three capacities: (1) to consistently produce excellent products of their expertise, (2) to replicate their skillset in the next generation, and (3) to use that expertise ethically. A doctor serves as a paradigm case of an expert in Gorgias —while a doctor has the technical ability to both heal and poison, the doctor also has good judgment that will prevent them from using their powers for harm. In Plato’s day, expertise was transmitted through apprentice learning, and so a doctor would also train subsequent generations of doctors. In Gorgias , Plato establishes these criteria for a trustworthy expert who can pass on dangerous skills responsibly. While the dangerous skill in Plato’s day was oratory, we can apply the same criteria to another dangerous form of expertise: artificial intelligence. By corollary, expert engineers should possess the technical skills, understand how to use those technical skills ethically (and actually use them ethically), and be able to replicate both of these skill sets in the next generation of engineers. We can use this account of expertise to develop a clearer picture of the ideal faculty we would hire to teach in all disciplines, but particularly technical disciplines, with the capacity to shape artificial intelligence for good or ill. Plato’s criteria provide us with the criteria required to pick out mentors for a robust virtue ethics-based training of the designers (and even the users) of technology: (1) technical ability, (2) teaching ability, and (3) ethical practices (at least in the scope of their technical domain).