The Sovereignty of Good Over the Algorithm

The sovereignty of Good over the algorithm is the central thesis of the volume's engagement with AI: that the moral life requires orientation toward a standard (Good) that is external to any engineered system, and that no optimization target — however well-designed — can substitute for this external standard. Helpfulness, harmlessness, user satisfaction, accuracy-to-training-data: these are engineering specifications, and each describes something the system is measured against. Good, in Murdoch's sense, describes what is actually good for the person and the world — a standard the system does not and cannot consult. The practical consequence is that a person whose only reference point is the system's outputs is a person who has lost access to the sovereign standard, and whose moral perception degrades accordingly.