Technology as uncharted territory: Contextual integrity and the notion of AI as new ethical ground

Recent research illustrates how AI can be developed and deployed in a manner detached from the concrete social context of application. By abstracting from the contexts of AI application, practitioners also disengage from the distinct normative structures that govern them. As a result, AI applications can disregard existing norms, best practices, and regulations with often dire ethical and social consequences. I argue that efforts to promote responsible and ethical AI can inadvertently contribute to and seemingly legitimize this disregard for established contextual norms. Echoing a persistent undercurrent in technology ethics of understanding emerging technologies as uncharted moral territory, certain approaches to AI ethics can promote a notion of AI as a novel and distinct realm for ethical deliberation, norm setting, and virtue cultivation. This narrative of AI as new ethical ground, however, can come at the expense of practitioners, policymakers, and ethicists engaging with already established norms and virtues that were gradually cultivated to promote successful and responsible practice within concrete social contexts. In response, I question the current narrow prioritization in AI ethics of moral innovation over moral preservation. Engaging also with emerging foundation models and AI agents, I advocate for a moderately conservative approach to the ethics of AI that prioritizes the responsible and considered integration of AI within established social contexts and their respective normative structures.