The impact of artificial intelligence technology on social ethical order and its response Chen Wanqiu Xia Xiaoyu

Artificial intelligence is one of the greatest inventions of mankind in the 20th century. It is rapidly and profoundly changing the world and people themselves, achieving deep intervention in social life. Artificial intelligence systems (such as unmanned driving systems, emotional robots, medical intelligence systems, drones, face recognition systems, etc.) are being widely and rapidly used in large numbers, having a comprehensive and profound impact on human society, and becoming a hot issue that continues to be paid attention to and discussed in the academic community. Kurzweil believes that human progress in the 21st century will be 1,000 times that of the 20th century. Artificial intelligence not only brings good development prospects to mankind, but also brings subversive changes to the social ethical order. Analyzing this and proposing countermeasures are prerequisites for the development of responsible artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence's construction of social ethical order

Optimize the allocation of resources and promote social justice. In the era of artificial intelligence, everything can be digitized. With the support of massive artificial intelligence data, the social needs and social resource distribution of a country or region can be more comprehensively and accurately grasped, providing a strong basis for the scientific and rational allocation of resources. In the field of education, large AI education models, such as Wenxinyiyan, Tencent Yuanbao and other large models can provide personalized learning plans for educated people, so that each student can obtain more appropriate educational resources and educational plans, which is conducive to promoting educational equity. In the medical field, AI medical large models, such as Huawei's medical large model, can assist different groups of people in diagnosing diseases. This model can put aside regional and class differences, cover all types of people in society, and greatly reduce the uneven distribution of resources caused by economic and regional differences.

Improve production efficiency and promote ethical progress. Artificial intelligence is both "the engine of the productivity revolution" and "the touchstone of ethical progress." Artificial intelligence has significantly optimized output efficiency in manufacturing, service industries and other fields through automated processes, data-driven decision-making and personalized services, effectively reducing production costs and errors. The advancement of intelligent technology has greatly improved social productivity, allowing material wealth to flow fully, and people have more time and energy to pay attention to higher-level ethical issues. The emergence of intelligent driving systems in the transportation field has reduced the incidence of traffic accidents. While ensuring the safety of people's lives and property, it has also changed people's understanding of transportation ethics and prompted people to pay more attention to public safety. In this process, artificial intelligence not only serves as an object regulated by ethics, but also becomes a key force in promoting ethical progress.

Expand moral boundaries and enrich ethical connotations. The iterative development of smart technology forces people to re-examine ethical boundaries. For example, the relationship between AI and humans, the autonomous decision-making ability of AI systems forces people to start thinking about whether AI has subjectivity and moral status, and how to ensure the alignment of artificial intelligence and human values. These considerations not only enrich the connotation of ethics, but also provide a new direction for the development of social ethical order. In addition, artificial intelligence has also given rise to new ethical issues in specific applications. For example, autonomous driving faces a variant of the “trolley problem,” and medical AI diagnosis and treatment challenges the traditional understanding of the doctor-patient relationship. At the same time, generative artificial intelligence is widely used in academic fields, and its creative capabilities have given rise to the issue of copyright ownership of intellectual property rights in digital products, thereby promoting the in-depth evolution of the social ethical order.

Artificial Intelligence’s Deconstruction of Social Ethical Order

The risk of privacy leaks has intensified, threatening people’s dignity. Personal privacy is regarded as a luxury in the smart era. The collection and analysis of individual behavioral data has become the most common "food" for the development and application of artificial intelligence. Facial recognition technology is widely used in hotels, ride-hailing, platform shopping and other fields, which to a certain extent intensifies the risk of personal privacy leakage. The implementation of data monitoring in public security, transportation, commerce, education, etc. has formed "super panoramic surveillance", making contemporary people become "transparent people" with no place for privacy. E-commerce platforms can make effective predictions about users' purchasing behavior by collecting and analyzing privacy data such as users' browsing history and language interactions. An individual's scattered data on the App can be collected and reorganized through artificial intelligence to generate an "AI digital person", which can even create a digital profile that understands the individual better than the individual. The leakage of these privacy seriously threatens personal dignity and freedom, and undermines the basic requirements of social ethical order for social privacy protection.

Algorithmic bias is prevalent and undermines fairness and justice. Because artificial intelligence is affected by algorithmic bias in data training, it may produce unfair, discriminatory or non-neutral results in the decision-making process. This kind of bias widely exists in bank loans, job recruitment, judicial trials and other fields. For example, due to algorithm bias, artificial intelligence shows a higher probability of crime for certain groups of people in judicial risk assessments, recruitment systems automatically filter resumes of vulnerable groups, and financial models continue to reject loan applications from marginalized groups. In the process, the myth of technology neutrality was completely shattered. At the same time, algorithmic bias may also undermine the principle of social fairness and exacerbate social inequality. It is both a digital reflection of real-world inequality and the product of a lack of ethical awareness in the technology design process.

The continuous alienation of interpersonal relationships dissipates social ethics and warmth. With the widespread use of emotional robots, "virtual companions" are favored by young people. The instant gratification of virtual social interaction makes people more willing to talk to intelligent robots, thus alienating the relationship between people in real society. This kind of emotional substitution not only changes the traditional emotional model between people, but also dissolves the natural biological basis of social and ethical connections. The alienation of interpersonal relationships will lead to the decline of social cohesion and affect the stability and healthy development of the social ethical order.

Scientifically respond to the challenges of artificial intelligence to social ethical order

Establishing the basic principles for the development of artificial intelligence is an important cornerstone. Safety, reliability, and controllability have always been the basic principles for the development of artificial intelligence, and they are also the highest principles for scientifically responding to the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to the social ethical order. The development of technology must be based on benefiting mankind and must not endanger human security. No matter how technology advances, it must be ensured that it always serves humanity. In the design, development and application of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to avoid the imbalance of individual equal rights and interests caused by discrimination and bias of algorithms. At any time and anywhere, no matter how close artificial intelligence is to the "singularity", it cannot change its human nature. People are always the master switch for intelligent machines.

Strengthening scientific research on the development of artificial intelligence is a key support. Strengthen research on the impact mechanism of artificial intelligence on social ethical order, scientifically predict the possible adverse effects of artificial intelligence, explore the roots and essence of various ethical issues that may arise, and provide reliable policy basis for formulating corresponding countermeasures. In research, we must be committed to developing trustworthy artificial intelligence systems and embedding ethical principles into algorithms and models, so that artificial intelligence can consciously abide by ethical rules in decision-making, reduce ethical risks, and ensure that artificial intelligence complies with human moral standards. At the same time, we promote interdisciplinary research, such as ethics, political science, law, public administration, sociology, etc., and integrate the research results of multiple disciplines to provide scientific basis for the governance of artificial intelligence.

Improving system governance for the development of artificial intelligence is an important guarantee. It is necessary to build a systematic and diversified governance system, covering multiple levels such as legal norms, industry standards, and social supervision, to form a governance pattern in which the whole society participates. Policies and laws such as the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Principles - Developing Responsible Artificial Intelligence" and "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Ethical Norms" issued by my country, the "Artificial Intelligence Act" issued by the European Union, and the "Ethical Artificial Intelligence Framework" issued by the United States all provide reasonable paths for artificial intelligence to effectively avoid ethical risks. At the same time, the development of artificial intelligence urgently requires the formulation of operable industry standards and rules, the establishment of a systematic and socially engaged agile governance system, and the improvement of timely and efficient process management effectiveness. In addition, the development and governance of artificial intelligence require global cooperation to build a systematic international cooperation system to jointly respond to the global challenges of artificial intelligence.

(The authors are respectively secretary of the party committee, professor, and doctoral supervisor of the School of Marxism, Changsha University of Science and Technology; special researcher of the Innovation Research Center for Philosophy of Science and Technology and Science and Technology Ethics Governance, Changsha University of Science and Technology)

Selected from "Xinxiang Review" Issue 11, 2025