TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 11—15 · FACTUAL · DURABLE

Hard ethics has more than one side

Careful thinking hears the strongest point on each side before deciding.

The idea

Some questions have one right answer. Is this wall 3 metres long? Measure it. Some ethical questions are clear too: do not fake a test result. But many hard ones are not. Should a school use face-recognition to take attendance? One side says it saves time. The other side says children should not be scanned every morning. Both sides have a point. That is what makes it a hard ethical question. Careful thinking means hearing the strongest point on each side before you decide, instead of grabbing a rule or going with whatever your friends feel today.

Why it matters

AI brings many new choices like this into your life at once. If you can hold two sides in your head, you will not be pushed around by whoever speaks loudest.

See it in the studio

A design class votes on whether to let students use an AI drawing tool for homework. "Yes, it helps us learn faster." "No, we will stop learning to draw." A good class does not just vote. It writes both lists first.

Watch for this

"Everyone thinks so" and "the rule says so" used as the whole answer. Neither one is an answer. Each is where your thinking should begin.

Try it

Pick one AI question from your week. Write the three strongest points for each side. Then write your own view in two lines, and say which point nearly changed your mind.

Prove it

Argue one AI question from both sides out loud, then give your own answer and one reason that is your own, not borrowed from a rule or from the crowd.

How it works

People who study ethics call this weighing values — speed against privacy, help against harm, my benefit against someone else's cost. Two honest people can weigh the same values differently. The aim is to see the whole scale, not to win. Not every question needs the scale: where one side has no real point, a long debate is a delay, not thinking. Many of the cards in this part of the map are weighing exercises, and they all need this habit.

What this idea builds on

What this idea opens up

Sources

Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.

Age grows from 11 at the centre to 22 at the edge, and six sectors show the learning strands. Tab into the map and the arrow keys step from idea to idea, following the links where there is one. Enter opens the idea under the cursor, and E reads out its links and the reason recorded on each. Press slash for Search, question mark for the full key list, and Escape to leave. Open Ideas for the complete readable list, including what each idea builds on and what it opens up.

LOGIKA · RBDS AI LAB INDIA
ON-RAMP · AGE 11 · FIRST ENCOUNTERS, NOT GATES — IDEAS · — DEPENDENCIES
DONE
OPENS NEXT
SOLID — STANDS ON